With the novel coronavirus reaching the most isolated tribe on this planet, fears have escalated. The Brazil government recently confirmed that?a 15-year-old boy from a remote?Amazon tribe?contracted the virus, the first case of the infection among the?Yanomami people?in Brazil.???
¡°We confirmed a case [of the virus] among the Yanomami, which is very worrying,¡± the AFP quoted Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta as saying at a news conference.
¡°We have to be triply cautious with (indigenous) communities, especially the ones that have very little contact with the outside world," he added.?
The patient, a 15-year-old Yanomamiboy, is being treated in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Boa Vista, the capital of the northern state of Roraima, officials said.
Brazil has now confirmed at least seven coronavirus cases among the indigenous population, according to the newspaper Globo.Last week, a 20-year-old from the Kokama ethnic tribe tested positive for the coronavirus.?
Anthropologists and health experts have warned that the epidemic could have a devastating impact on Brazil¡¯s 850,000 indigenous people, whose lifestyles in tribal villages rules out social distancing.
Survival International, a human rights organization told the Newsweek that a disease like has the potential to wipe out the entire indigenous population Jonathan?Mazower, communications director of Survival International, told?Newsweek,"?There is certainly a real risk of many tribes being completely wiped out, as has happened many times in the past.?Uncontacted?tribes are particularly vulnerable, as they lack immunity to outside diseases."
Largely isolated from the outside world until the mid-20th century, they were devastated by disease such as measles and malaria in the 1970s. Indigenous peoples in the Amazon rainforest are particularly vulnerable to imported diseases because they have been historically isolated from germs against which much of the world has developed an immunity.?