AP PHOTOS: Brazil virus despair stretches from Rio to Amazon

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — From the Amazon city of Manaus to the seemingly endless urban sprawl of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, freshly dug graves have been filling up quickly for weeks with the bodies of Brazilians killed by COVID-19.

Deaths from the coronavirus hit some cities so hard starting last month that officials were unprepared for the crush of bodies even though regional governments imposed measures aimed at halting the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, President Jair Bolsonaro railed against business shutdowns as more harmful than the virus itself — and the country’s first lockdown was not ordered until this week, when there were already more than 7,000 deaths.

As the toll rose, Associated Press photographers and videojournalists fanned out across Latin America’s largest and most populous country to capture the agony experienced by regular Brazilians — at cemeteries, at hospitals and at a prison with rioting inmates, as well as at religious ceremonies and inside the homes of grieving relatives.

They spent days traversing the narrow alleys of Brazil’s teeming slums, or favelas, where more than 11 million of the country’s 211 million people live in cramped conditions that experts fear could be decimated by virus outbreaks.

In one Rio favela, 31-year-old manicurist Leticia Machado and her husband, who does odd jobs, haven’t had work since business restrictions were imposed in the city. They’re relying on food donations from neighbors and a nearby cultural center to feed their seven children.

The city’s hospitals are close to capacity and health workers complain that they don’t have enough essential drugs to treat patients. Some workers had to buy their own protective gear at the public hospital where Taina dos Santos’ 56-year-old mother worked as a nursing assistant — until she died of...