Bolivia’s Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (CEJIS) has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic could seriously endanger the Bolivian Amazon's Indigenous peoples close to the Santa Cruz and Beni regions.

"We are very short of witnessing a catastrophe," said CEJIS warning of a possible "ethnocide" in more vulnerable Indigenous populations.

CEJIS added that 46 out of 58 indigenous territories are close to municipalities in which the number of COVID-19 cases continues to increase exponentially.

This is the case in Lomerio and Urubicha in the Department of Santa Cruz, where the Yuqui and Guarani indigenous peoples are settled.

In the Lomerio region, six COVID-19 deaths, 17 infected oil workers, and four infected Yuqui indigenous persons were reported.

CEJIS said that there is no precise information on the impact of the pandemic on indigenous Amazonian peoples because the Health Ministry did not include the variable of ethnic self-identification in the epidemiological records used to report COVID-19 cases.