The disastrous management of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic by way of an oxygen crisis is now being used as an excuse to support the revival of highway BR-319. In early 2021 the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the Brazilian city of Manaus. Families watched their loved ones die, gasping for air. Hospitals ran out of oxygen. The world saw heartbreaking scenes of people begging for help, and many asked: how could this happen?
In January 2021, a doctor working at Hospital Universitário Getúlio Vargas (HUGV-Ufam), who wished to remain anonymous, said:
The current situation is chaotic throughout the city and the entire health service. My colleagues have said that in some emergency rooms the situation is simply surreal. They must choose who lives and who dies and deal with a terrible physical and emotional overload.
Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, became the face of a national failure to protect its citizens during a public health emergency. But even during this human catastrophe, a different kind of campaign was unfolding. However, it was a catastrophe concerned not with saving lives, but with paving roads.
Amazon’s BR-319 highway, an 885km abandoned military-era road cutting through the Amazon rainforest connecting Manaus and Porto Velho, was quickly pulled into political discourse. Supporters, including members of Brazil’s conservative bloc, claimed that the oxygen crisis highlighted the critical need to rebuild the BR-319 highway to ensure that medical supplies could reach Manaus without delay during future emergencies.
However, studies and expert testimony reveal a far more troubling reality: the oxygen crisis has been used as pretext to advance an infrastructure project that could accelerate deforestation, degradation, weaken Indigenous land protections, and cause irreversible damage to one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth.
Oxygen crisis and BR-319 linked in unexpected manner
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities exposed the deeper causes behind the collapse of healthcare in Manaus.
The tragedy was not merely the result of an aggressive and highly contagious coronavirus variant. It was a disaster long anticipated and driven by years of systemic neglect. Federal and state governments disregarded epidemiological warnings and scientific evidence. They also failed to coordinate effectively, and thus perpetuated a long-standing pattern of underinvesting in the Amazon region’s fragile health infrastructure.
Notably, the absence of a road link via the BR-319 was not identified as a decisive factor. Instead, the study revealed a critical failure in logistical decision-making during the oxygen crisis. Authorities opted to use the treacherous and nearly impassable BR-319 highway to transport life-saving oxygen. They did so as they ignored faster and more reliable options like the Madeira River or military aircraft.
This catastrophic choice, made by the minister of infrastructure under Tarcísio de Freitas, and the minister of health under Eduardo Pazuello, cost irreplaceable time and countless lives.
Advance warning
Even more damning is the fact that the Amazonas state government had been warned well in advance. As early as six months before the crisis, researchers raised the alarm – four separate times – beginning with a technical report commissioned by the state’s public ministry.
By November 2020, officials were fully aware that oxygen supplies would fall dangerously short. Despite the advance warning and the mounting evidence, they chose not to act. This was not a crisis that took anyone by surprise. It was a catastrophe shaped by silence, denial, and a failure to protect the most vulnerable.
Lucas Ferrante, researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), who had long warned the authorities of an approaching second wave of COVID-19, said:
The convergence of misinformation, political negligence, and escalating deforestation exposes how infrastructure projects in the Amazon are being driven by deceit, through fabricated narratives, data manipulation, and the deliberate distortion of public policy to advance anti-democratic and anti-Indigenous agendas.
Ferrante explained that:
This case also carries profound political weight: Tarcísio Freitas, a front-runner among the far-right candidates in the upcoming presidential elections, is directly implicated in this public health disaster, underscoring how state resources are being weaponised to serve narrow economic ambitions and ideological extremism.”
Political opportunism
The political exploitation of this tragedy quickly became evident. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president at the time, along with his congressional allies, seized on the oxygen crisis as an opportunity. Instead of confronting a looming public health failure, they chose to advance a long-standing agenda. They framed the reconstruction of the BR-319 not as the ecological threat it truly is, but as a humanitarian necessity. Indoing so they portrayed the highway as a lifeline rather than an ecological disaster it truly represents.
Despite urgent and well-documented warnings from the scientific community, many political and business leaders in the region continue to use the memory of the oxygen crisis as justification to push forward the BR-319 project.
Among the strong advocates of this argument is Senator Omar Aziz. On May 27, he posted on X:
The BR-319 is not just a road; it is the artery that should connect Amazonas and Roraima to the rest of Brazil. During the pandemic, we’ve experienced firsthand what it means to be isolated, without oxygen, without supplies, without help. It’s unacceptable that, due to bureaucracy and rhetoric so far removed from our reality, we remain hostage to abandonment.
Senator Plínio Valério has also repeatedly referred to the tragedy to support reconstruction. On May 30, he wrote on Instagram:
During the pandemic in 2021, trucks loaded with oxygen got stuck on unpaved stretches of the BR-319. Meanwhile, people died from lack of air in Manaus hospitals. This road is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. It’s the right to come and go.
Senator Eduardo Braga similarly used the oxygen crisis to reinforce the case for the BR-319. In February, he posted:
The BR-319 isn’t just a road; it’s a pathway to the development of our Amazonas state. I know well how essential this highway is to reduce the cost of living, strengthening our economy, and ensuring the safety and quality of life of our people.
During the pandemic, we witnessed the tragedy of the oxygen crisis. Trucks loaded with cylinders got stuck in the mud on the BR-319, while our people suffered and lives were lost.
Highway as political tool
More than a practical solution, the BR-319 has become a political tool, strongly supported by powerful figures, including the governor of Amazonas, Wilson Lima. However, it’s the mayor of Manaus, David Almeida, who has actively invoked the oxygen crisis to defend the highway’s reconstruction.
But, the dangers of the BR-319 are not abstract. Rebuilding the highway would cut through some of the most pristine regions of the Amazon. That would expose vast areas to illegal logging, mining, land grabbing, organised crime, rampant deforestation, and degradation. The resulting destruction would be both immediate and irreversible.
According to several articles, the BR-319 project would provide access to one of the largest zoonotic reservoirs on the planet, which may lead to public health crises much greater than that experienced in Manaus. Scientists warn that the highway would open a dangerous front in the ongoing assault on the rainforest. It would fracture delicate and vital ecosystems and threat Indigenous and traditional communities who rely on the forest.
A call for integrity
The attempt to link the oxygen crisis with the BR-319 highway is a textbook example of a crisis being weaponised for political and economic gain. It reduces a multifaceted public health failure to a simplistic infrastructure problem, while ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus about the environmental, social, health, and economic costs of the road.
Rather than investing in sustainable river transport and bolstering public health infrastructure across the Amazon, Brazil’s political elite has opted for a shortcut, one that paves the way not to resilience, but to ruin.
Manaus did not run out of oxygen because of the lack of a highway. It ran out because of political negligence, poor planning, and the failure to prioritise the lives of Amazonian people.
The BR-319 highway, far from being a solution, is a looming ecological disaster disguised as humanitarian aid.
To truly honour the memory of those who died gasping for breath, Brazil must resist the urge to pave over its mistakes with asphalt, and instead pursue policies rooted in science, sustainability, and respect for the Amazon’s irreplaceable role in our planet’s health.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.