Brasilia, Brazil.
With deaths hospitals that are about to collapse and a slow-motion vaccination campaign, Brazil is going through the deadliest phase of the coronavirus pandemic without a national strategy to contain it.
The South American giant recorded 1,641 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday and 1,910 on Wednesday, two consecutive records since the first case reported in February 2020. The total number of victims of the disease is nearly 260,000, a balance surpassed only by the United States. and 10.7 million infections.
“For the first time since the start of the pandemic, there has been a simultaneous deterioration of several indicators across the country,” the prestigious Fiocruz Foundation of the Ministry of Health said this week.
It is about a “alarming scenario” with an increase in cases and deaths, high levels of severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS) and an occupancy of more than 80% of beds in intensive care units (ICU) in 19 of 27 Brazilian states, the institution explained.
Lea: Five countries agree to accelerate the approval of vaccines against covid-19 variants
In the past seven days, there was an average of 1,331 daily deaths, a figure that remained close to 1,100 until February. Since January, the country has failed to lower the 1,000 deaths per day during the first wave, as it did last year between June and August.
The casualty rate shows that the movement restrictions imposed by mayors and governors in recent weeks – and criticized by President Jair Bolsonaro – were insufficient to stop the pandemic.
Experts say the worrying recovery is due to the lack of social distance during the end of year celebrations and the hustle and bustle of the Australian summer and carnival, despite the latter being formally banned.
Some studies also point to the new variant of coronavirus from the Amazon, dubbed P.1, twice as contagious, already detected in 17 states and causing alarm worldwide.
“The tip of the iceberg”
Brazil, a country of 212 million inhabitants, is getting slow vaccination against covid for a month and a half due to lack of doses: 7.4 million Brazilians have been vaccinated so far and only 2.3 million of them with the second dose.
This emergency “is no surprise: it is because we had not prepared ourselves, because this scenario was foreseen. We knew there was a new variant and there must have been a lockdown,” said the vice president of the Brazilian Society of Immunology. (SBIM) told AFP Isabella Ballalai.
The state of Sao Paulo, the richest and most populous state, returns to the “red phase” of restrictions on Saturday for two weeks, which allows the operation of health services, food, public transport and schools, but prohibits the opening of commercial centers, restaurants and showrooms.
Also: “Dream and Promise Act” reaches US Congress
“Today, we are in Sao Paulo and Brazil on the brink of a health collapse,” São Paulo governor Joao Doria warned Wednesday, whose state is admitting a patient with covid every two minutes.
In Brasilia and in the states of Mato Grosso, Pernambuco, Rondonia and Acre, among more than a dozen, activity has already been reduced to essential services or shop opening hours are limited, with possible curfews.
Even the richest states with more infrastructure, such as Paraná and Santa Catarina (south), are “critically alert” to the occupation of ICU beds.
However, Fiocruz warned that the current scenario represents “only the tip of the iceberg at a level of intense transmission” of the coronavirus.
Self-management
The emergency and lack of coordination on the part of the federal government forced mayors and governors to buy vaccines on their own.
State secretaries on Monday called for a nationwide curfew and a “lockdown” in the most critical areas.
But that position clashes with that of Bolsonaro, who along with his followers promotes agglomerations, questions the use of masks and the effectiveness of vaccines, and criticizes authorities applying measures of social isolation for their economic impact.
Now the country is simultaneously facing a worsening pandemic and a new and sharp slowdown in its economy.
The far-right president, who has set his sights on the 2022 elections, said last week that governors who decide to shut down activities “will have to pay” with their own budget for economic aid to the poorest population.
“This disagreement between the federal state and the state has been one of the biggest problems, with a lot of politicization of the issue, and that has undoubtedly made the country one of the worst places to contain the pandemic,” Ballalai said.