Although a new variant of coronavirus is spreading across the country, many Brazilians continue to challenge the mandatory mobility restrictions of masks following the example of President Jair Bolsonaro, who recently said that people should “stop being sissies ”and“ complain ”about the virus.
The consequences of this combination are deadly, experts say. “We are experiencing the worst case scenario since the beginning of the pandemic. Just look at the trends in the average death toll,” Gonzalo Vecina Neto, a professor of public health at the University of Sao Paulo, told Reuters television recently. . “This could have been avoided and the most important factor is the meetings.”
Brazil has broken its own record three times this month by the number of deaths in a 24-hour period. On Wednesday, the Brazilian Ministry of Health recorded a new devastating high: 2,286 lives lost by the virus. In all, more than 270,000 people are known to have died from Covid-19, making Brazil the second-highest national death toll after the United States.
In 22 of the 26 Brazilian states, ICU employment has exceeded 80%. In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, hospital patients have to line up to wait for beds, as occupancy rates in intensive care units soar by 103%. The neighboring state of Santa Catarina has already exceeded 99% occupancy and is on the verge of collapse, as cases increase across the state.
A hospital in the capital of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, is already out of capacity. David Molin, the hospital’s chief nurse, tells CNN that his team is exhausted and overwhelmed.
“I was here during the first wave and it wasn’t like that. We’re completely overwhelmed, with an occupancy rate of over 100%. A lot of those patients waiting for an ICU don’t get it,” Molina told CNN. during a telephone interview.
Health workers blame the meetings
Molina and other health workers blame the recent rise in Covid-19 cases at large parties and gatherings that began around New Year’s Eve and continued during pre-Lent carnival festivities until nowadays. Many of these remained in defiance of state and local city restrictions.
Last week, the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, announced a new curfew for bars and restaurants across the city, limiting operating hours from 6:00 to 17:00. But hundreds of people were left out anyway: 230 fines and curfews related to the curfew were issued only from Friday to Saturday, according to the city government. At a bar, more than 200 masked partygoers were found at a party that had been going on for seven hours, CNN Brazil affiliate CNN reported.
Many municipal and state health officials and lawmakers blame the Bolsonaro government for undermining its efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus. And the country’s National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) has called on the federal government to take stricter measures to support hospitals and enforce social distancing.
“The health care system in Brazil is about to collapse,” Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria told CNN’s Becky Anderson in a recent interview. “There is no national coordination to fight the pandemic in Brazil. It would be important for the president and governors to send the same message to the people, but that unfortunately does not happen in Brazil.
The issue of social distancing measures and blockades has become a political football in Brazil. While Doria ordered closing non-essential businesses for two weeks in his state last weekend, Bolsonaro says those restrictions are sinking Brazil’s economy and leading to an increase in suicides and depression. He has turned disobedience to health guidelines into pride, congratulating farm workers at an event last week for not staying home “like cowards”.
“We have to deal with our problems. Stop being sissies, enough complaints, how long will they keep crying? We have to deal with the problems, respecting the elderly, people with illnesses, chronic illnesses. But where will Brazil end up? up if we all stop? ”he said.
This week, Bolsonaro declared he had the “power” to declare a national closure, but he would never do so. “My army won’t force people to stay home,” he said.
Fears for the new variant
With Brazilian hospitals overloaded and government officials divided over the blocking measures, the country has few defenses against a variant of the coronavirus that can be even more contagious.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, suggests that even people who have already had the coronavirus may be vulnerable. The same study showed that variant P.1 could elude immunity from previous Covid-19 infection by up to 61%.
This variant is now common in Covid-19 patients in at least six Brazilian states, according to a study published earlier this month by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), a research institution of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. P.1 has also been detected in the United States, the United Kingdom and neighboring Venezuela.
“The emergence of new variants, which combine both the potential to be more transmissible and the absence of broad and articulated mitigation and suppression measures, are highly worrying,” the study’s authors wrote, urging Brazil to encourage behaviors that limit viral spread.
“The data that show the prevalence of this variant in several states and its widespread use throughout the country, as well as the challenges that arise due to its high level of transmission, reinforce the immediate need to adopt non-pharmaceutical measures to reduce the speed or its spread and the increase of cases “.
Felipe Naveca, a virologist and researcher at Fiocruz Amazonia and one of the study’s lead authors, told CNN that the Covid-19 virus and different variants and strains will likely strengthen if they don’t stop.
“This is what viruses do: they evolve, they become stronger. The only way to stop it is to contain its spread, so we need restrictive measures: there is no other solution. Even if the “Government decrees a national blockade, we need the population to adhere. The action of each of us will impact everyone as a whole,” Naveca said.
Vaccination
Hope could be on the way, in the form of vaccines. But the implementation of vaccination in Brazil was slow compared to other countries, including others in the region, such as Chile and Mexico.
In January, health regulator Anvisa authorized the emergency use of vaccines by Sinovac and Oxford / AstraZeneca. Since then, approximately 4% of the 211 million Brazilian citizens have received at least one dose of vaccine, according to data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and 2.3 million have had two doses.
According to the Ministry of Health, Brazil is negotiating the purchase of Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, Sputinik and Covaxin vaccines, although only the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has been granted authorization by Anvisa.
Bolsonaro had long promoted the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine as the only one that would support, dismiss and discredit many of the other vaccines on the market, including the Pfizer vaccine. Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello even turned down an August offer from Pfizer to buy up to 70 million doses of his vaccine.
“Pfizer says it very clearly in the contract,‘ we are not responsible for the side effects ’: if you become an alligator it’s your problem,” Bolsonaro said in December. “If she becomes Superman, or she shaves like a woman, or if a man’s voice gets high, they say they have nothing to do with it.”
But a study in the New England Journal of Medicine now suggests that the Pfizer / BionTech vaccine could “efficiently” neutralize the P.1 variant. The news came when Bolsonaro held a virtual meeting Monday with Pfizer Global CEO Albert Bourla and other executives to negotiate the purchase of 100 million vaccines.
“I thank you for this meeting and we recognize Pfizer as a great global company,” Bolsonaro said during a snippet of the meeting posted on his official Twitter account. “We would like to close these agreements with you, even more so, given the aggressiveness of this virus in Brazil.”
For now, Brazil’s failure to contain the virus is increasingly a warning to the world. Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, said at a briefing last week that he was concerned that the country’s increase in cases could be repeated elsewhere.
“History in Brazil can be repeated and will be repeated anywhere else if we stop implementing the measures as we have to apply them,” he said. “Countries will fall back on the third and fourth rises if we are not careful.”
For Molina, the exhausted nurse from Santa Catarina, the future of Brazil looks darker than ever.
“Unfortunately, I think we haven’t learned the lesson,” Molina said. “We [health workers] He is tired, exhausted and getting sick. We feel powerless. We need more coordinated action if we are to prevent this from happening again.
Journalist Marcia Reverdosa reported from Sao Paulo and CNN’s Flora Charner reported from Atlanta.