Death and denial in Brazil's Amazon capital during pandemic

As the white van approached Perfect Love Street, chatting neighbours fell silent, covered their mouths and noses and scattered. Men in full body suits carried an empty coffin into the small, blue house where Edgar Silva had spent two feverish days gasping for air before drawing his last breath on May 12

"It wasn't COVID," Silva's daughter, Eliete das Graças insisted to funerary workers. She swore her 83-year-old father had died of Alzheimer's disease, not that sickness ravaging the city's hospitals

But Silva, like the vast majority of those dying at home, was never tested for the new coronavirus. The doctor who signed his death certificate never saw his body before determining the cause: "cardiorespiratory arrest." His death was not counted as one of Brazil's victims of the pandemic.