Brazil’s Minister of Health confirmed that the coronavirus has officially reached the Amazon’s Indigenous Yanomami tribe, a notably remote group situated along the Brazil-Venezuela border. Amidst concerns that the coronavirus could irreversibly affect the world’s most at-risk populations, Brazilian officials announced Wednesday that a 15-year-old Yanomami boy was the first in the tribe to contract Covid-19 and was in the ICU; by Thursday, it was confirmed that the boy died from the virus.

Since the news of the child’s contraction of and resulting death from Covid-19, many experts have spoken out to warn that the coronavirus could have disastrous effects on not only the Yanomami people, but also the entirety of Brazil’s Indigenous population. Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense of the Amazon and its Indigenous people, released a statement emphasizing the potential detriment to the Amazon’s population if the coronavirus continues to spread. They stress that “the health of many Indigenous peoples is already precarious due to the prevalence of externally-introduced contagious diseases and chronic illnesses” within their populations, and the addition of Covid-19 into their communities will only make them more unstable unless the government can devote adequate resources to the prevention of the virus. Brazil’s Minister of Health stated to Brazilian press that the government plans to build a treatment center in the area for the Yanomami and other Indigenous Amazonian tribes affected by Covid-19, calling the potential spread of the virus “very worrying.”

Many experts fear that the presence of Covid-19 in the Amazon could mean the end of the Amazon’s Indigenous populations as the world knows them. This fear is not so far-fetched, considering their inherent lack of immunity to common diseases present in the rest of the world, as well as their absence of adequate healthcare and health resources. Although the Brazilian government’s intention to provide Indigenous people with more direct treatment via field hospitals around the Amazon is a step in the right direction, it is only scratching at the surface of the actions needed to guarantee that the Indigenous people’s populations will not be decimated by this virus. It is crucial for the government to additionally limit, or outlaw as a whole, the mass intrusion and general movement of non-Indigenous people in the area.

The area in which the Yanomami and other Indigenous tribes are located is often populated by outsiders, typically illegal gold miners or other construction workers; Amazon Watch stated that “more than 20,000 have illegally invaded the Yanomami territory since last year.” In fact, according to Al Jazeera, the particular village that the 15-year-old boy was from has served as an access route to gold miners, making it extremely likely that they were the outsiders he contracted the virus from. The invaders of this territory and isolated Indigenous territories around the world are frequently the cause for decimating events within the Indigenous populations, as they spread disease and manipulate Indigenous ecosystems and environments.

It is currently unclear if any other members of the boy’s community have contracted Covid-19, but according to how the virus has been spreading around the rest of the world – and taking into account the Yanomami’s close-quartered living – it is likely that this is only the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak within the Yanomami tribe. The Brazilian government will have to make urgent decisions regarding Covid-19 to preserve their Indigenous populations, like many other countries are currently scrambling to do; for example, the Australian government officially closed the only road into one of its most isolated Indigenous tribes in its Northern Territory in order to protect the tribe from Covid-19, according to Al Jazeera. The novel coronavirus will hopefully be the push needed for the Brazilian government to seriously recognize and act upon the threat posed to its Indigenous people by outsiders.