“If possible, (women should) postpone the pregnancy a little at a better time so that (they) can have a more peaceful pregnancy,” the secretary of primary care at the Brazilian Ministry of Health said on Friday. Raphael Camara. “We can’t say that to those who are 42, 43 years old, of course, but for a young woman who can, the best thing is to wait a little,” he said during a press conference.
Brazil is second only to the United States in Covid-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, with 368,749 deaths and more than 13.8 million cases. Cities across the country have been hit hard by a recent rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths, fueled in part by new variants considered highly contagious and ignoring Brazilians for social precautions.
“In Brazil, the federal response has been a dangerous combination of inaction and wrongdoing, including the promotion of chloroquine as a treatment despite a lack of evidence,” said a team led by Marcia Castro of Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, experts at the University from São Paulo and elsewhere wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
The researchers said the “prompt and fair” responses from the federal government could have helped limit the outbreak and protect the most vulnerable – but leaders have failed and still fail to do so.
In the city of Manaus, an increase in severe cases has led to the collapse of hospital systems, with a lack of oxygen for patients.
“Without immediate action, this could be a preview of what is going to happen in other locations in Brazil,” the team warned. Unless the government has taken immediate action, carried out epidemiological and genomic surveillance measures and intensified vaccinations, the spread of the variants is likely to lead to “unimaginable loss of life”.
The chamber said on Friday that the ministry is working on studies on the issue of pregnancy and its variants.
“We do not have a national or international study, but the clinical vision of the experts shows that the new variant has a more aggressive action on pregnant women,” he said. “Before, [severity] it was related to the end of the pregnancy, but now (they) see a more serious evolution in the second trimester and even in the first trimester “, he added.