Indigenous groups that live in remote areas of the Brazilian rainforest are the new target of COVID-19.

Advocates for these vulnerable groups have made efforts to keep outsiders and visitors from invading these areas, but without success.

Remote groups of indigenous people often get visits by miners, gold diggers, and other natural resource exploiters who put them in danger by spreading the deadly virus in their habitat.

Usually, these groups have little, and most of them no contact with the outside world.

Coronavirus has taken the lives of one Tikuna and one Marubo people, while 450 others are infected.

Javari Valley is a region in Amazonas state in Brazil, encompassing a territory the size of Austria.

Over 800,000 indigenous people are living in this area, and if the authorities don’t protect them and ban the entrance to their communities, Brazil will face a terrible loss of some of the largest native groups that live in harmony with the Amazonian jungle.

Douglas Rodrigues, a physician who works with indigenous groups for over 40 years, is warning that “the situation in the Javari Valley is critical,” also saying, “we are preparing for a catastrophe.”

The government of Brazil is doing nothing but exploiting the lands of the indigenous people, but when it comes to their protection and keeping them safe from viruses and diseases, the only answer they get is silence.