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With record deaths, hospitals on the brink of collapse and a slow-motion vaccination campaign, Brazil is experiencing the deadliest phase of the coronavirus pandemic without a national strategy to contain it.
President Jair Bolsonaro, A skeptic of the pandemic, he regretted the deaths, but once again ironic this Thursday about the new measures of social isolation imposed by several governors. “Enough with that story, to be lamenting. How long will they be crying? ”Said the far-right president, who has his sights set on the 2022 elections, in an act.
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“How long are they going to be locked up at home, how long is everything going to be closed? Nobody can put up with that anymore. We regret the deaths, I repeat, but there has to be a solution, “he added.
Brazil registered 1,641 deaths from coronavirus 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 close to 260,000, a balance surpassed only by the United States, and 10.7 millions of infections. The country has the second highest death toll in the world, after the United States.
“For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, a simultaneous worsening of various indicators has been verified throughout the country,” said the prestigious Fiocruz Foundation of the Ministry of Health this week.
This is an “alarming scenario” with an increase in cases and deaths, high levels of severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS) and an occupation of more than 80% of beds in intensive care units (ICU) in 19 of the 27 Brazilian states, explained the institution.
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In the last seven days the average has been 1,331 daily deaths, a figure that until February remained close to 1,100. Since January, the country has not managed to lower the 1,000 deaths per day, as happened between June and August last year, during the first wave.
The rebound results, according to experts, from the lack of social distancing during the end of the year festivities and the crowds of the austral summer and Carnival, despite the fact that the latter were formally prohibited.
Some studies also point to the new variant of coronavirus from the Amazon, called P.1, twice as contagious, already detected in 17 states and causing global alarm.
“The tip of the iceberg”
Brazil, a country of 212 million inhabitants, takes a month and a half of slow vaccination against covid, due to a lack of doses: so far, 7.4 million Brazilians have been vaccinated and only 2.3 million of them with the second dose.
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This emergency “is not a surprise: it is due to not having prepared ourselves, because this scenario was planned. We knew there was a new variant and there must have been a lockdown, ”Isabella Ballalai, vice president of the Brazilian Society of Immunology (SBIM), told AFP.
This Thursday, Rio de Janeiro reimposed restrictions on bars, restaurants and beaches as of Friday to, according to its mayor Eduardo Paes, “prevent a repeat of the genocide” of 2020 in the Rio de Janeiro capital. The state of Sao Paulo, the richest and most populous state, will return on Saturday, for two weeks, to the “red phase” of restrictions, which prohibits the opening of shopping centers, restaurants and theater venues.
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 the opening hours of shops have been limited, with possible night curfews.
Even the richest states with more infrastructure such as Paraná and Santa Catarina (south) are on “critical alert” for ICU bed occupancy. However, Fiocruz warned that the current scenario “represents only the tip of the iceberg of a level of intense transmission” of the coronavirus.
Self-management
The emergency and the lack of coordination on the part of the federal government pushed mayors and governors to articulate on their own to buy vaccines.
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The health secretaries of the states asked on Monday to implement a night curfew nationwide and a “lockdown” in the most critical areas. But that position clashes with that of Bolsonaro, who promotes agglomerations with his followers, questions the use of masks and the effectiveness of vaccines.
Last week, Bolsonaro affirmed that the governors who decree closures of activities “will have to pay” with their own budgets for economic aid to the poorest population. “This disagreement between the federal and the state has been one of the great problems, with a lot of politicization of the issue, and without a doubt that made the country one of the worst places to manage the pandemic,” said Ballalai.
