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Brazil broke its record of deaths from covid-19 in 24 hours on Tuesday, with 1,972 officially reported deaths, without showing signs that the pandemic is subsiding in a country with an overwhelmed hospital system and vaccination progressing at a slow pace.
Since the start of the health crisis a year ago, Brazil has totaled 268,370 deaths, a balance surpassed only by the United States.
The Ministry of Health also reported 70,764 new cases, with a total of 11.1 million.
The previous record for deaths was dated March 3 (1,910).
In the last seven days, the average is 1,573 deaths in 24 hours, a constant increase for two weeks.
The country of 212 million inhabitants is experiencing a dramatic situation.
According to a Fiocruz Foundation bulletin released this Tuesday, 25 of the 27 Brazilian state capitals have more than 80% occupancy of their places in intensive care units.
“Front of extremely critical situation from the occupancy rates of intensive care beds (…), the researchers reinforce the need to expand and strengthen measures of physical distancing, use of masks and hand washing, ”said Fiocruz.
They are advice that is difficult to generalize in a country where the president himself, Jair Bolsonaro, disdains the use of masks and opposes the measures of social isolation that some states try to apply, due to their economic impact.
“The fight against covid-19 was lost in 2020 and there is not the slightest chance of reversing this tragic scenario in the first half of 2021,” Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist from Fiocruz / Amazonia, told AFP.
“The most we can do is wait for the miracle of mass vaccination or a radical change in the management of the pandemic. Today Brazil is a threat to humanity and an open-air laboratory, where impunity in management seems to be the rule ”, he added.
Last week, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the country to adopt “aggressive” measures against the pandemic.
“If Brazil does not take it seriously, it will affect all the neighbors and beyond, so this is not only about Brazil, I think it concerns all of Latin America,” he said.
Vaccination, on the other hand, is progressing slowly: Brazil has applied the first dose to 8.6 million people (4.1% of the population), while 2.9 million received the second.
The vaccines used are the CoronaVac, from the Chinese Sinovac laboratory, and the Swedish-British laboratory from Astrazeneca / Oxford.
The Ministry of Health He claims to be negotiating with other laboratories and would have recognized that “the national vaccination campaign is at risk of being interrupted due to lack of doses,” according to a letter to the Chinese ambassador released on Tuesday by the G1 news portal.
In the letter, the ministry asks the Chinese mission to help negotiate with the Sinopharm laboratory for the purchase of 30 million doses of its immunizer.
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