Featured Image: Sex workers protest at Rua Guaicurus, in Belo Horizonte, in Brazil's Minas Gerais state 
on April 5, 2021, asking to be considered a priority group to receive the vaccine against COVID-19.
Credits: Yahoo

As the number of COVID-19 cases spirals out of control in Brazil, sex workers in the city of Belo Horizonte in southeast Brazil have gone on strike for a week, reports Yahoo News.

The city’s sex workers are demanding to be included in the group of “front-line workers” that should receive priority coronavirus vaccines.

The Wuhan coronavirus has hit the global economy in a very bad way, with Brazil being no exception, leading to thousands of sex workers out of a job due to the forced closure of hotels during this pandemic.

Prostitutes would often rent rooms in many hotels and the hotels made a tidy profit as well, which is why Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes of Minas Gerais state, told media persons, “We are in the front line, moving the economy and we are at risk. We need to get vaccinated.”

Vieira and other women held a protest Monday (5 April) waving placards declaring: “Sex workers are professionals” and “Sex work and health.”

“We are a priority group, we are health educators, peer educators. We form part of that group, since we give information about STIs for men, distribute condoms…” said Vieira.

“We are part of the priority group because we deal with various types of people and our lives are at risk,” said Lucimara Costa, one of the protesting prostitutes.

As per government guidelines, health workers, teachers, the elderly, indigenous people and people with underlying health conditions have been prioritized for the first vaccination round. The Brazilian government hopes to vaccinate these priority groups, estimated to be around 77 million people, in the first half of 2021.

However, this is seen as a tall order because due to a shortage of doses the target to inoculate 77 million people may be achieved only in September and that could lead to further deaths.

So far the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 332,000 lives in Brazil, second only to the United States.

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