Sao Paulo – The battle of Brazil against a dangerous one coronavirus The variant has left its hospitals on the verge of rupture, with new cases skyrocketing and the death toll rising sharply. An expert told CBS News that Americans should be “very concerned” about the possibility that the mutant virus, or others not yet detected, could settle on U.S. soil.
The rise of COVID-19 in Brazil is being driven by both the highly infectious P-1 strain which was first detected in that country and was a highly criticized government response to the pandemic. The variant has already been found in more than half of the US states.
According to CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez, the situation in Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, and across the country, is dire. When the P-1 variant began to be taken last month, hospital intensive care units in more than half of the Brazilian states already had a capacity of 90%, or more.
CBS News witnessed first-hand how the situation appears to be getting even worse, pushing Brazil’s robust healthcare system to the brink. All patients at Vila Penteado General Hospital in Sao Paulo suffer from COVID-19. There is no other place.
De Jesus told Bojorquez that, in his experience, it is likely that less than half of the patients he is treating will recover from the disease. Surprisingly, he said more and more of these patients are between twenty, thirty and forty years old.
Unlike U.S. ICUs, their hospital wards are open, with no barriers between patients. It feels like the worst case for doctors trying desperately to save lives. Bojorquez observed how people were intubated to put it in ventilators, while in another room chest compressions were given to a patient. It is a daily struggle that haunts those who work at the facility and countless others throughout Brazil.
“Most cases, the last one they see, is me, the nurses,” he said of Jesus.
Scientists believe the P-1 variant is feeding the rise. Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a distinguished professor of neuroscience at Duke University School of Medicine, told CBS New that the strain is transmitted two and a half times more easily from person to person, and that’s a concern for everyone, even outside the country’s borders.
“If I talked to someone in Oklahoma, I would tell them to be very concerned,” Nicolelis told Bojorquez. “Because if Brazil is out of control, the world will be out of control in a few weeks. Because the variants that are made here every day, every week … will escape.”
He said he spoke about the worsening threat in Brazil months ago, but few heard the most prominent President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been criticized for minimizing the pandemic and the fight against restrictions set by some governors, including that of Sao Paulo.
“We are fighting two viruses right now, the coronavirus and the ‘Bolsonorovirus,'” Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria told Bojorquez.
Doria has angered Bolsonaro supporters, but believes the limited restrictions he has been able to enforce in Brazil’s most populous state, home to more than 46 million people, including the closure of shopping malls, have begun. to give results.
But he said the measures he can take without the national government being included are simply not enough to combat the health crisis.
“We need, right now, to be united against the virus, not divided, and we are divided,” he said. “We are defending [for a] lock right now. We are currently in the red phase. It’s a closure, a local closure, to guide people to stay home right now. Please stay home. “
The Brazilian Ministry of Health says that about 3% of the country’s population has been completely vaccinated. The country currently uses two unapproved vaccines in the United States, but the most widely used drugs in the United States show mixed results in protection against the P-1 variant.