Rows of freshly dug graves at the Vila Formosa Cemetery, one of the largest in Latin America, and the site where many of the city's victims of COVID-19 are buried. The gravediggers are working hard to keep up with the death toll that continues to rise. New areas are taken into use and old graves are being dug up in advance, so that they are ready when the vans with the virus’ latest victims arrive.
85-year-old Rosa Luzia Lunardi is embraced by nurse Adriana Silva da Costa Souza, the first hug she receives in five months. In March, care homes across the country closed their doors to all visitors, preventing millions of concerned Brazilians from visiting their elderly relatives, while the caretakers were ordered to limit all physical contact with the vulnerable to an absolute minimum. But at Viva Bem, an old age home outside Sao Paulo, a simple new invention ‘The Hug Curtain' has once again allowed people to see and hug each other without risking their lives. And for those who do not have visitors, volunteers and staff are ready to step in – because, as they say at Viva Bem : "Everyone deserves a good hug".
Leonardo Runyo (35), wearing PPE to protect himself from the novel coronavirus, stands in the yard of a home in the Paraisópolis favela. He is with a team of volunteers are going from home-to-home testing residents in the crowded favela in order to get an idea of the infection rate. 120,000 people live in the cramped favela in the middle of São Paulo. According to the latest study 49 percent of the population in the favela either have been or still are infected by COVID-19. That’s nearly 60,000 infected people on a small plot of land in the middle of a megacity.
Doctors from Samu (emergency mobile care service) attend to Balbina de Paula Santos, who lives with her daughter in a house in Campo Grande. Despite her 99 years, she's been healthy and of sound mind,until a month ago when she started coughing and displaying other symptoms of COVID-19. The doctors suspect she has the virus and are arranging for her to be taken to an isolation unit at a hospital in Campo Grande.
Wards in an indoor stadium temporarily converted into a field hospital as authorities try to cope with the rising number of COVID-19 patients in São Paulo. The site is named Hospital de Campanha Pedro Dell'Antonia (Santo Andre) and has 100 beds.
A nurse is attending a critically ill patient who is suffering from COVID-19 in the intensive care unit of the Hospital Geral do Mandaqui.
Members of the Ballet Paraisópolis practice their skills while wearing face masks at a local community center in the favela. Growing poverty and the persistence of large urban slums in cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have allowed the virus to spread quickly through cramped homes and districts. Many poorer citizens who get infected are unable to isolate due to precarious jobs and the need to feed their families. Places like Paraisopólis, an overcrowded slum in southwestern São Paulo which is surrounded by affluent areas, have become epicentres of the spread of the disease and while a tenth of the city is thought to have been infected, the rate here is almost 50 percent.
Maria do Carmo Rodrigues (66) is critically ill, suffering from COVID-19, lies in a bed in the intensive care unit of the Hospital Geral do Mandaqui.
A young man wearing his protective gear is looking out over the densely populated São Paulo favela Paraisópolis. He and other volunteers are testing their fellow citizens for antibodies and active COVID-19. According to the latest study 49 percent of the population here either have been or still are infected by COVID-19. That’s nearly 60,000 infected people on a small plot of land in the middle of a megacity.
Ronald Apaza places a hand on the coffin of his father Simon Apaza during the funeral of the 81 year old man, the pillar of the family, who died of COVID-19. It all happened so fast and the family still can’t comprehend what has happened. Before the children leave, Ronald looks at two freshly dug graves with no flowers on them. He picks up two roses from his own father's grave and lays one on each of the two graves. “It’s like they don’t have a family,” he says. "But somewhere there is always someone who thinks of you."
Brazil has one of the the world’s highest rates of Covid-19 infections, at over 5 million, and some 148,000 people are thought to have died of the disease (as of 8 October 2020). In March, care homes across the country closed their doors to all visitors, preventing millions of concerned Brazilians from visiting their elderly relatives and having any physical contact with them. Tens of thousands died without being near their loved ones one last time. At Viva Bee, an old age home outside Sao Paulo, as in many hospitals and care homes across Brazil, a simple new invention has once again allowed people to see and hold their elderly relatives – through plastic sheeting that prevents infection.
Bruno Zani, a businessman in the events industry, claims to have invented the ‘Hug Curtain’ and his model has since been copied all over the world. A thick sheet of translucent plastic has two sets of ‘sleeves’ which elderly residents and their visitors can use to embrace each other without putting each at risk.
