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In Brazil, there have been more than 3,300 deaths from COVID-19, with the most affected home in the state of Sao Paulo for a third of the country’s cases.
On April 20, 2020, health workers in protective suits monitor a patient infected with COVID-19 in the intensive care unit, at the Emilio Ribas hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photo: AFP
SAO PAULO – Frederic Lima arrived at the already overwhelmed Emilio Ribas hospital in Sao Paulo with symptoms of coronavirus. Less than 12 hours later, a doctor told the 32-year-old aunt, “We did everything we could.”
It has become a very familiar show for Dr. Fernanda Gulinelli, who treated Lima.
She signs as many death certificates as release forms in the intensive care unit (ICU) in Emilio Ribas, the first public hospital in the state to be brought to a breaking point by the coronavirus.
In Brazil, there have been more than 3,300 deaths from COVID-19, with the most affected home in the state of Sao Paulo for a third of the country’s cases.
“Generally, we have more discharges than deaths outside the pandemic, but with the severity of these patients we have days with more deaths than high,” said Gulinelli.
Brazil has not yet reached the peak of its outbreak, which the health ministry predicts will not occur until May.
In addition to a 22-year-old patient with tuberculosis, all ICU patients Emilio Ribas, aged 37 to 66, are confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19, said Jaques Sztajnbok, a medical supervisor at the unit.
The 54-year-old man says that this disease is different from any other he has found in his 28 years in Emilio Ribas.
Now “we always have 100 percent occupancy because when a person leaves, there are 100 requests” to enter, Sztajnbok said.
Beds are only available when an existing patient recovers or dies.
For Sztajnbok, the difference between COVID-19 is “the large number of cases” and that it is “a very serious disease that affects several organs and requires weeks of intensive care.”
The problem is that “it is necessary to maintain the capacity to treat the five percent (of the cases) that according to the statistics need intensive care. No country has so many intensive care beds and Brazil is no exception,” he said.
‘WE DID EVERYTHING’
After his admission, Lima was put on a respirator, but the doctors were unable to increase his oxygen levels. Even after an hour of CPR they were unable to revive him.
“You question whether you really did everything. I know we did everything, but it affects you a lot. Since he stopped breathing, I felt like he hit me,” said Gulinelli.
Lima was a doctor, originally from the north, who worked in the ICU of another public hospital.
He lived alone and started feeling symptoms last week, but he did not tell his aunt Rosa da Rocha, one of the few members of his family in Sao Paulo.
“I don’t know why he didn’t say anything, maybe because he was young. He didn’t have any health problems, he was exercising, he was young, he had his whole life ahead of him,” said Da Rocha minutes after receiving the bad news.
Lima had been taken to the ICU as soon as he arrived at the hospital. Luckily, there was a free bed.
Dr. Luciana Borges, accident and emergency supervisor for Emilio Ribas, said the public hospital already had a shortage of beds before the coronavirus outbreak exponentially increased demand.
Half of the patients who come to the emergency care unit need hospital treatment, he added.
At Emilio Ribas, where he was granted access to AFP, medical professionals are feeling the strain and their numbers are decreasing due to illness.
Of the 22 doctors working there, two had to be isolated because they were among the most vulnerable population.
A doctor has contracted the disease and a second shows symptoms.
For Gulinelli, this “is a new chapter in medicine that we have to write on the fly, and we don’t know what the next sentence will be.”
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