10 de janeiro de 2021

13:01

Carolina Givoni – From Cenarium Magazine

With new highs of hospitalizations and burials in the Amazon capital city on January, the mayor of Manaus, David Almeida (Avante), declared in an interview with CNN Brasil that one of the first measures to face the pandemic of the new coronavirus have be the opening of 22 thousand graves to bury the victims vertically.

“We are urgently providing for the rapid construction of approximately six thousand out of a total of 22 thousand pits. We are hiring on an emergency basis (this service) so that we can ensure that families can have their loved ones buried in a dignified manner”, Almeida said the presenters of the CNN 360 program.

‘Digger in the pandemic’

David Almeida is an ally of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.  On the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil – April 2020 – Bolsonaro was ironic with the increase in the number of deaths and declared that he was not a “gravedigger” after that asked by a journalist.

“President, today we had more than 300 deaths (there are 113; after disclosing it, the Ministry of Health corrected it). How many deaths do you think … “, asked a journalist when Bolsonaro interrupted him.

“Hey, man, who talks about … I’m not a gravedigger, right?”, Declared the president.

The reporter then tried to ask the question again.

“I’m not an undertaker, okay?”, Repeated the President of the Republic.

‘Vertical cemetery’

Still in the interview, David also announces the vertical cemetery as a morbid novelty for the North region. “We are going to make the so-called vertical cemeteries, which here in Manaus is a novelty, we do not have. We usually have the burial in a traditional way and we are here building this cemetery, in the same place where almost all the victims of Covid-19 are dead. We are going to open 22,000 graves vertically ”, detailed the mayor of Manaus.

‘Purple Alert’

After the Amazon reached the purple alert of contamination by the crises, considered by the World Health Organization (OMS) to be one of the most serious, the capital concentrates 89,109 infected and representing 41.84% of the cases in the State, according to data from the Health Surveillance Foundation (FVS-AM).

The institution also confirms the registration of 3,692 deaths by Covid-19 just in Manaus. The funerary note, issued daily by the City, informed that only on Saturday, 9, has been almost 130 burials registered in the Manaus´s cemeteries. Of these, 103 were in spaces managed by the Municipal Secretariat for Urban Cleaning (Semulsp), of which two of them opted for the cremation service. Only one death from another city recorded. In private cemeteries, 27 burials was carried.