RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazil’s sharp rise in COVID-19 deaths will soon surpass the worst of the record wave in January in the United States, scientists forecast, with more than 4,000 deaths for the first time on Tuesday. one day, Tuesday, as an outbreak it overwhelms the hospitals.
The total death toll in Brazil follows the outbreak in the United States alone, with nearly 337,000 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health, compared to more than 555,000 deaths in the United States.
But with Brazil’s health system at the breaking point, the country could exceed the total number of deaths in the United States, despite having a population two-thirds that of the United States, two experts told Reuters.
“It is a nuclear reactor that has triggered a chain reaction and is out of control. It’s a biological Fukushima, “said Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian doctor and professor at Duke University who is closely following the virus.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health reported another 4,195 deaths through COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, well above the country’s previous record in a single day. Brazil has set daily death records every week since the end of February, as a more contagious local variant and limited social distancing efforts fuel an uncontrolled outbreak.
With mass vaccinations reducing the U.S. focus, Brazil has become the epicenter of the pandemic, contributing about one in four deaths a day globally, according to a Reuters analysis.
President Jair Bolsonaro has pushed back against wearing masks and blockages that public health experts consider the best way to reduce the spread of the virus.
The country dragged its feet last year as people rushed to get their vaccines, slowing the launch of a national immunization program.
Despite recent growth, Brazilian officials insist the country can return to business soon as usual.
“We think that probably two or three months from now, Brazil could return to business,” Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said in an online event on Tuesday. “Of course, economic activity is likely to decline, but it will be much, much less than the decline we suffered last year … and much, much shorter.”
Bolsonaro responded to rising political pressure with a dramatic shake-up of half a dozen ministries, placing loyalists in key roles ahead of what could be a tough re-election campaign next year against his political enemy.
While the president has changed his tone on immunizations, backing the vaccines he had recently despised, the former far-right army captain continues to fight in court against state and municipal restrictions on economic activity.
Given that weak measures fail to combat the contagion, COVID-19 cases in Brazil and deaths are accumulating faster than ever.
Nicolelis and Christovam Barcellos, a researcher at the Brazilian medical institute Fiocruz, separately predict that Brazil could surpass the United States both in terms of global deaths and the record of average deaths per day.
As soon as next week, Brazil could break the US average of seven days for deaths caused by COVID-19, according to a model of the influential Institute for Metrics and Health Assessment (IHME) at the University of Washington. The US average for daily deaths reached a high of 3,285 in January.
The IHME forecast does not currently extend beyond July 1, when it forecasts that Brazil could reach 563,000 deaths, compared to the 609,000 deaths in the US expected so far.
Reporting by Pedro Fonseca; Additional reporting by Jamie McGeever; Written by Jake Spring; Editing by Brad Haynes, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot