The number of deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil, which exceeded 250,000 on Thursday, is the second highest in the world for the same reason that the second wave of the virus in the country has not been brought under control: Prevention was never a priority.
Since the start of the pandemic, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has downplayed the virus by calling it “gripita” and criticized local leaders for restricting activities. He said the economy must be active to avoid further adversity.
Although it approved aid payments for the poor, such assistance was not advertised as a way to keep people at home. And Brazilians are out there as a vaccination campaign begins that is slower than expected.
“Brazil just didn’t have a response plan. We’ve been through this for a whole year and we still don’t have a clear plan, a national plan, ”Miguel Lago, executive director of the Brazilian Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health agencies, told The Associated Press. . ‘There is no plan. And the same can be said of vaccination ”.
While the number of daily infections and related deaths has declined in other countries, the largest country in Latin America remains stuck on a high plateau, just as it did in mid-2020. In each of the past five weeks, there have been an average of more than 1,000 daily deaths in the country. Official data confirmed a total of 251,498 deaths on Thursday.
At least 12 states in the country are experiencing a second wave worse than 2020, said Domingos Alves, an epidemiologist who monitors data related to COVID-19.
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“This scenario is getting worse,” Alves told the AP, adding that the virus is spreading more quickly among the population. In the state of Amazonas, where hospitals in the capital Manaus ran out of oxygen last month, more than 5,000 deaths were recorded in the first two months of the year, practically the same number as in all of 2020.
Alves and other public health experts consulted by the AP claim that the authorities ‘reluctance to follow international health organizations’ recommendations to put in place tougher restrictions on activities has facilitated the spread of the virus.
The decision to impose incarceration and restrictions to limit contamination rests with the governors and mayors. A curfew has recently been imposed in the states of Sao Paulo and Bahia to keep residents at home at night. But experts say these measures came too late and are not enough.
“They are not containment measures; they are palliative measures that have been implemented retrospectively, ”says Alves, who is also an associate professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. “‘Confinement’ has become a cursed word in Brazil.”
Miguel Nicolelis, a renowned Brazilian neurologist, warned in January that Brazil would have to impose imprisonment or ‘we will not be able to bury our dead in 2021. The doctor had advised states in the northeast of the country on how to combat COVID-19, but left the recently indicted for frustration with the authorities’ refusal to impose imprisonment, Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported.
“At the moment, Brazil is the largest open-air laboratory, where it is possible to observe the natural dynamics of the coronavirus without any effective containment measure,” he tweeted Tuesday. “All will witness epic destruction.”