The number of deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil, which on Thursday exceeded 250,000, is the second highest figure in the world for the same reason that the second wave of virus in the country could not be controlled: Prevention never goes be a priority.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro downplayed the virus, calling it a “flu,” and criticized local leaders for imposing restrictions on activities. He said the economy had to stay active to prevent further adversity.
Although he approved assistance payments for the poor, this assistance was not advertised as a way to keep people at home. And Brazilians are going around as a vaccination campaign begins that has progressed slower than expected.
“Brazil just didn’t have a response plan. We’ve been through this for a whole year and we still don’t have a clear plan, a national plan,” Miguel Lago, executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies, told AP of Health of Brazil, which advises the public health authorities. “There is no plan. And the same can be said of vaccination.”
While in other countries the number of daily infections and related deaths has been declining, the largest nation in Latin America remains stagnant on a high plateau, as happened in mid-2020. In each of the last five weeks have been made an average of more than 1,000 deaths a day in the country. Official data confirmed a total of 251,498 deaths on Thursday.
At least 12 states are going through a second wave that has turned out to be even worse than that of 2020, said Alves Sunday, an epidemiologist who monitors data related to COVID-19.
We recommend:
“This scenario will get worse,” Alves told the AP, adding that the virus is spreading faster among the population. In the state of Amazonas, where hospitals in the capital Manaus ran out of oxygen last month, more than 5,000 deaths have been recorded in the first two months of the year, almost the same number as in all of 2020. .
Alves and other public health experts who were consulted by the PA claim that the reluctance of the authorities to follow the recommendations of international health organizations to implement more severe restrictions on activities has facilitated the spread of viruses.
The decision to impose confinements and restrictions to contain the contagions depends on the governors and mayors. In the states of Sao Paulo and Bay, curfews were recently imposed to keep residents at home at night. But experts say these measures came too late and are not enough.
“These are not containment measures; they are palliative measures implemented after the events,” said Alves, who is also an adjunct professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. “‘Confinement’ has become a damn word in Brazil.”
Miguel Nicolelis, a renowned Brazilian neurologist, warned in January that Brazil should impose a confinement or “we will not be able to bury our dead in 2021. The doctor had advised northeastern states on how to combat COVID-19 , but left the post recently due to frustration over the authorities’ refusal to impose confinements, the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported.
“Right now, Brazil is the largest outdoor laboratory, in which it is possible to observe the natural dynamics of the coronavirus without any effective containment measures,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “They will all witness an epic devastation.”