As vaccinations accelerate and the coronavirus retreats, Brazil finally allows itself to hope for better days

Throughout the pandemic, Brazil has looked to Manaus for clues for what was coming next. The city, which eschewed containment measures successful elsewhere, was the country’s first to experience a widespread medical failure. After a period of recovery, it then gave rise to the variant known as gamma or P.1, which devastated the country and punctured hopes that Manaus had reached herd immunity. Researchers have described the city as a “sentinel,” allowing the scientific community to study an urban setting where the virus was allowed to spread largely unmitigated.