A powerful neighbor is already called the region’s “leprosarium”: the new trend of COVID-19 is also worrying

Leading by the number of deaths from COVID-19 per day and raising concerns about a more contagious and potentially deadly strain in the Amazon region, Brazil is a major concern for global health officials and the country’s neighbors, who are shutting it down. doors. Among other things, a worrying new trend is now emerging here: COVID-19 is making more and more young people seriously ill.

Peru has cut flights to and from the country, Uruguay is sending additional doses of vaccines to its border cities, and Chile is accommodating anyone coming from Brazil in special quarantine hotels.

Colombia has not only banned flights to and from Brazil, but also to its own city of Leticia, located on the border, thus putting hundreds of tourists in a difficult situation since mid-January.

“You feel like a prison without bars,” said Gladys Cuellar, who runs a fast food restaurant in Leticia, Amazonas de Gava, with her husband Antonius.

In a Lethia with a population of 50,000, the number of deaths from COVID-19 was nearly three times the national average last year. The city lives off tourism and most of its food and supplies come from Brazil and Peru.

“It’s difficult to make that decision,” Julián Fernández, director of epidemiology for the Colombian Ministry of Health, said of the shutdown. While it is practically impossible to stop the spread of the Brazilian strain in the most densely populated central region of Colombia, “we are trying to reduce the spread of the infection to the country and its rate to buy time to accelerate vaccination.”

Colombia, with a population of 50 million, injected a total of some 600,000 doses of vaccine. She pays particular attention to her stretch of the Amazon near Brazil, offering vaccinations to anyone over the age of eighteen who lives in urban areas.

In the rest of the country, in addition to health workers, only people over 80 are vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine.

Officials from the World Health Authority have expressed serious concern about the risks Brazil poses to the region as a whole, with seventeen countries closing their borders to travelers from Brazil.

Argentina canceled a ceremony to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Mercosur trading bloc, which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was scheduled to attend. According to her, that decision was made due to the deepening health crisis in the region. The ceremony will take place online.

In the first week of March, Brazil experienced the worst period of the pandemic: more than 420,000 new cases, 10,000 deaths.

For a country with a population of just under 3%. of the world’s population represents about 10 percent. COVID cases and deaths.

The vaccination process is slow. While some governors and mayors have introduced curfews and, in some cases, strict quarantines, interstate travel continues, international airports continue to operate. Even in areas with stricter restrictions, enforcement measures are rarely applied.

The president of Brazil, Bolsonaro, has been insisting for some time that too much attention is being paid to the coronavirus, that maintaining the mask and physical distance is for “cowards” and that “life must go on.”

“We are very concerned about Brazil,” said the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanomas Ghebreyesus. – The same happens with Brazil’s neighbors, almost all of Latin America. This means that if Brazil does not take the situation seriously, the crisis will affect the entire neighboring region and beyond. So it’s not just Brazil that is worrying. “

Uruguay, which closed its international borders at the beginning of the pandemic, began intensifying patrols of its nearly 1,000-kilometer land border with Brazil last year.

The country shipped additional doses of the vaccine from its first shipment of 192,000 Coronavac vaccines to these cities. In the absence of a ‘hard’ border separating the country’s largest border city, Rivera, from Santana do Livramento in Brazil, the number of new cases has increased dramatically, without a decrease in the flow of people and people who go shopping. .

“The main problem today is undoubtedly what is happening in Brazil,” José Mazzonis, deputy governor of the Rivera department, said by phone.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced in March that ten cases of the Brazilian variety had been identified and that “we must cut transmission channels.”

Argentina restricts flights from several countries, including Brazil.

And Chile, in a rush to avoid a situation like Peru and Colombia, is demanding that all travelers who have been in Brazil in the last fourteen days visit a “sanitary residence” where they will be tested for COVID-19. In the case of a positive test, the person remains in that institution. In the case of a negative test, you will have ten days to self-isolate at home.

Colombia operates “humanitarian flights” to repatriate tourists trapped in Bogotá.

Meanwhile, Gladys Cuellar, a restaurant owner in Leticia, is looking forward to getting vaccinated.

“We are like those Colombian laboratory mice,” he says. “We are isolated, and now we have to wait for the situation with the Brazilian variety to come to light.”

A new trend

When the coronavirus arrived in Brazil, most of the people who initially became infected with COVID-19 and died from the infection were older people. Since the beginning of 2021, Brazil has been going through the most difficult period of the pandemic so far. Daily deaths and new morbidity figures are breaking previous records, writes CNN.

As the situation worsens, a troubling new trend has emerged, with a severe form of COVID-19 appearing to be affecting and killing more and more young people, doctors across the country told CNN.

The question is why? Does the new strain infect and make things difficult for younger people? Does the specific behavior of young people increase the risk of infection? Or perhaps both factors influence it?

Doctors in intensive care units across the country are repeating the same thing: With the start of the latest wave, patients are younger than ever.

“We see people between 30 and 50 years old who do not complain about their health anyway. This is the profile of many patients,” said Dr. 33. Pedro Archer, Intensive Care Physician, Public Hospital of Rio de Janeiro “That’s the biggest difference in the last wave.”

Since mid-January, CNN reporters have spoken with nearly a dozen doctors and nurses who work in the intensive care units of hospitals in various Brazilian states.

All medical staff interviewed said there were more young people than ever in the intensive care unit of their hospital.

“The number of serious infections is much higher than in the first wave,” said Intensive Care Physician Dr. Juan Matos de Menezes, speaking at a public hospital in the city of Manaus in the Amazon state. “Obviously, his health is much worse.”

The Brazilian Ministry of Health publishes national statistics on the age at which people kill themselves due to COVID-19. AFP performed a statistical analysis and found that people aged 30 to 59 make up about 27 percent. the number of deaths from coronavirus in the last three months. By comparison, in December, victims of that age accounted for 20 percent.
AFP also found that 7% died of coronavirus during the same period. fewer people aged 60 and over. CNN did not independently confirm the analysis.

The increase in morbidity and mortality in young people coincided with the spread of at least one new strain of COVID-19 in Brazil. It is widely recognized that the so-called P.1 strain, according to emerging researchers in Brazil, is easier to transmit, up to 2.2 times, according to a recent study.

March 4, the national health research institute Fiocruz conducted a study in eight Brazilian states. According to her, more than half of all COVID-19 cases in the six states are “concerning”, including option P.1 and, in particular, those of the United Kingdom (United Kingdom) and the Republic of South Africa (PAR ). .

Several doctors believe that the P.1 coronavirus strain, first detected late last year, has contributed to demographic changes in patients. It is true that it is still too early to say what specific role it plays.

“It is possible that the new variants of the coronavirus are more lethal, but we do not have scientific evidence to support this,” said Brazilian epidemiologist Jesem Orellana. “We do know, however, that the P.1 strain is easier to transmit, and that trait plays an important role in the raging second wave of the pandemic.”

“The virus is spreading much more easily,” said Natalia Pasternak, a Brazilian microbiologist. – It will infect more people, as well as more young people. It is possible that the increase in morbidity is only an epidemiological effect of a large number of people infected at the same time. “