Insulae

The Covid-19 pandemic hit hard the region of Amazonas, northern Brazil. The virus navigated the rivers and arrived at places with lack of medium and high complexity health services.

The insulae were the housing for the poorest people in Ancient Rome. Those

buildings destined to collapse housed thousands of people at constant risk. The

problems of the Amazonas State, Northern Brazil, have also kept it on the verge of

collapse. But it was during the Covid-19 pandemic that socioeconomic inequalities

showed the fragile structure of the largest state in Brazil. Distances and travel

difficulties, the lack of medium and high complexity health services in the

municipalities of the countryside, the lack of a qualified sanitation system reflected

directly in an unprecedented health crisis. Destroyed families; native peoples under

constant threat; people dying at home; collective burials; deceased left in cold rooms

allocated to hospitals. There was no way out for decades of wrong priorities. The bill

arrived and like the insulae, the Amazon experienced collapse. The pandemic took

lives. Thousands of them, now buried in the isolated Amazonian territory.