RIO DE JANEIRO – The Covid-19 has already left a trail of death and despair in Brazil, one of the worst conditions in the world. Now, a year after the epidemic, the country is setting another record.
No other nation that has had such a large outbreak is yet to have a record number of deaths and the collapse of health care. Many other tough nations, instead, are taking temporary steps towards a sign of normalcy.
But Brazil is fighting more contagious forms that have swept through a large city and spread to others, as well as the Brazilians throwing out precautionary measures to keep them safe.
On Tuesday, more than 1,700 Kovid-19 deaths were reported in Brazil, the highest single-day toll of the epidemic.
“The growing epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which could soon be the case in every region of Brazil,” the Association of National Health Secretaries said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the anime rollout of vaccines and the slow pace at which they are becoming available do not indicate that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.”
And Brazil – and probably the news has gone bad for the world.
Preliminary studies suggest that the variant spread in the city of Manus is not only more contagious, but it also appears capable of infecting some people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. And the variable has slipped across the borders of Brazil, showing a low number in dozens of other countries and in the United States.
However, trials of numerous vaccines suggest that they may protect against serious illness when they do not prevent infection with the variant, even though most of the world is not inoculated. That means people who recovered and thought they were safe for now could still be at risk, and that world leaders would once again lift restrictions.
Harvard T.H. William Henaj, an epidemiologist at Chan School Public Health, said: “You need vaccines to get these things done. “Immunity to running your cemetery out of the room, it won’t be enough to protect you.”
That fear of new variables is not lost on scientists around the world. U.S. Department of Disease Control and Prevention The director of the centers, Rochelle Valensky, urged Americans this week not to let their guards down. “Please listen to me clearly,” he said. “At this level of different types of spread cases, we will completely lose the hard work we have gained.”
The Brazilians had expressed hope that they had seen the worst of the outbreaks last year. Manaus, the capital of the northern state of Amazonas, was hit so hard in April and May that scientists wondered if the city had reached crowd resistance.
But then in September, as state cases began to rise again, health officials were shocked. An attempt by Amazon Governor Wilson Lima to impose a new quarantine before the Christmas holidays has met with fierce resistance from business owners and leading politicians close to President Jair Bolsonaro.
By January, scientists had discovered that a new type, known as P1, had become prevalent in the state. Within a week, the risk became apparent as the city’s hospitals ran out of oxygen between patients’ sprains, leading to death.
Doctor Antonio Souza is surrounded by horrified faces from his colleagues and patients’ relatives when it becomes clear that his psychiatric hospital has run out of oxygen. When oxygen ran out in another clinic she thought of a distressed patient to save a tragic death.
“No one should ever make that decision,” he said. “That’s pretty awful.”
Maria Glaudimar, a nurse at Maunus, said she felt trapped in a nightmare earlier this year that had no end. At work, patients and their relatives requested oxygen oxygen and intensive care beds were filled. At home, her son contracted tuberculosis after contracting Covid-19 and her husband lost 22 pounds fighting the virus.
“No one was ready for this,” Ms. Glaudimar said. “It was a horror movie.”
Since then, the coronavirus crisis in the Amazonas has eased a bit, but in most Brazil it is more severe.
Scientists have been able to find out more about the variant and its track spread across the country. But limited resources for testing have kept them behind the turn as they try to determine what role it is playing.
Andrew Britton, a Brazilian virologist at Yale University, said only half of the coronavirus genomes in Brazil came to his lab, respectively. While the United States has a genetic index on about one in about 200 confirmed cases, Brazil ranks in one out of 3,000.
Variants spread quickly. By the end of January, a study by government researchers had found that it was present in a percentage of samples in the Amazonas state, respectively. By the end of February, health officials had reported cases of the P1 variant in 21 of Brazil’s 26 states, but it is difficult to estimate its prevalence without further testing.
During this epidemic, researchers have found that the Covid-19 redistribution seems very rare, which has given people the possibility to recover, they have had immunity for at least a short time. But that was before P1 appeared and doctors and nurses began to feel something was amiss.
Jozo Alho, a doctor in Santarim, Perina, a state bordering the Amazonas, said many of the comrades who recovered 19 months ago had fallen ill again and tested positive.
Juliana Cunha, a nurse in Rio de Janeiro who works at the Covid-19 testing center, said she thought she was safe after catching the virus last June. But in November, after experiencing mild symptoms, she tested positive again.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Ms. Kunha, 23. “Those should be variables.”
But there is no way to confirm what is happening to reassured people, unless both their old and new samples are kept, genetically indexed and compared.
One way to reduce the boom would be through vaccinations, but as in many countries the rollout in Brazil has been slow.
Brazil began vaccinating priority groups, including health care professionals and the elderly, in late January. But the government has failed to secure large quantities. Rich Bolsonaro has been skeptical of both the effect of the disease and the vaccine.
As of Tuesday, more than 8.8 million Brazilians – about 2.% of the population – had received at least one dose of the covid-1 vaccine, according to the health ministry. Only 1.5 million received both doses. The country is currently using the Chinese-made Coronavac – which laboratory tests indicate is less effective than other types against P1 – and one manufactured by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
What you need to know about vaccine rollout
“Brazil’s failure to launch a strong vaccination campaign has set the stage for the current crisis,” said Margaret Dalak Ollomo, a pulmonologist at Ficruz, a leading scientific research center.
“We should vaccinate more than a million people every day.” “It simply came to our notice then. We don’t, not because we don’t know how to do it, but because we don’t have enough vaccines. “
Other countries should pay attention, said Aster Sabino, an infectious disease researcher at the University of So Paulo, who is one of the leading experts on the P1 variant.
“You can vaccinate your entire population and control the problem only for a short period of time, if elsewhere in the world, a new type will appear,” he said. “He’ll get there one day.”
Health Minister Eduardo Pazuelo, who called the change a “new phase” of the epidemic, said last week that the government was stepping up its efforts and hoped to vaccinate about half of its population by June and the rest by the end of the year.
But many Brazilians have little faith in the president-led government that sabotaged the lockdown, repeatedly denying the threat of the virus, and scientists say it clearly promotes absolutist measures long after they have failed.
Just last week the president spoke out about masks, which are one of the best defenses to control the infection, claiming they are harmful to children, causing headaches and difficulty concentrating.
Mr. Pazuelo’s vaccine estimates have also been met with skepticism. Last week, the government placed an order for 20 million doses of Indian vaccine in which clinical trials have not been completed. This led the federal prosecutor to argue in a legal filing that the 28 6,286 million purchase “puts millions at risk.”
If it proves effective, it will be too late for many.
Tony McQueen, a 39-year-old marketing specialist in Mussoorie, has lost a grandmother, an uncle, two aunts and a cousin in recent weeks. Finding free-bed hospitals for survival, he says, and arranging funerals for the dead is a vague effort of the time.
“It was a nightmare,” Mr. McQueen said. “I’m afraid of what’s next.”
Muela Andreoni and Ernesto Londo reported from Brasilia to Rio de Janeiro and Letcia Casado. Carl Zimmer contributed a report from New Haven, Conn.
