RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Brazilian hospitals are hesitant as a highly contagious coronavirus variant spreads across the country, the president insists on unproven treatments and the only attempt to create a national plan to contain COVID- 19 just fell short.
Over the past week, Brazilian governors have tried to do something that President Jair Bolsonaro stubbornly rejects: launch a proposal for states to help curb the deadliest outbreak of COVID-19 to date. The effort was expected to include a curfew, a ban on crowded events, and time limits on how non-essential services can operate.
The final product, presented Wednesday, was a one-page document that included general support for restricting activity, but without any specific measures. Six governors, evidently still wary of countering Bolsonaro, rejected the signing.
Piaui State Governor Wellington Dias told The Associated Press that unless pressure on hospitals is reduced, a growing number of patients will have to endure the disease without a hospital bed or any hope of treatment. in an intensive care unit.
“We have reached the limit throughout Brazil; exceptions are rare, “said Dias, who heads the governors’ forum.” The possibility of dying without help is real. “
These deaths have already begun. In Brazil’s richest state, Sao Paulo, at least 30 patients died this month while waiting for ICU beds, according to an account released Wednesday by the G1 news site. In the south of the state of Santa Catarina, 419 people are waiting to be transferred to the ICU beds. In neighboring Rio Grande do Sul, the capacity of the ICU is 106%.
Alexandre Zavascki, a doctor in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, described the constant arrival of hospital patients struggling to breathe.
“I have many colleagues who sometimes stop crying. It is not a medicine that we are used to doing routinely. It is a drug adapted to a war scenario, “said Zavascki, who oversees the treatment of infectious diseases in a private hospital.” We see that a large part of the population refuses to see what is happening, resisting the “These people might be close to going to the hospital and they want beds. But there won’t be any.”
The country, he added, needs “stricter measures” by local authorities.
On the president’s objections, last year the Supreme Court upheld the jurisdiction of cities and states to impose restrictions on activity. Still, Bolsonaro constantly condemned his moves, saying the economy needed to continue to shake and that isolation would cause depression. The measures eased towards the end of 2020, as cases and deaths of COVID-19 decreased, municipal election campaigns began and Brazilians at home grew tired of quarantine.
The most recent rise is driven by the P1 variant, which Brazil’s health minister said last month is three times more transmissible than the original strain. It began to dominate for the first time in the Amazonian city of Manaus and in January forced the airlift of hundreds of patients to other states.
Brazil’s failure to stop the spread of the virus since then is increasingly seen as a concern not only for Latin American neighbors but also as a warning to the world, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization, at a March 5 press conference.
“Across the country, the aggressive use of public health measures, social measures, will be very, very crucial,” he said. “Without doing things to affect transmission or suppress the virus, I don’t think we will be able to have a declining trend in Brazil.”
The death toll of more than 10,000 last week was the highest in Brazil since the pandemic began, and this week’s toll is even higher after the country recorded nearly 2,300 deaths on Wednesday, which it was a record.
“Governors, like much of the population, are fed up with all this inaction,” said Margareth Dalcolmo, a prominent pulmonologist at the state-run Fiocruz Institute. He added that his proposed pact is inaccurate and will remain symbolic unless it is powerful and confronts the federal government.
Last week, Brazil’s national council of secretaries of state called for the establishment of a national curfew and a closure in regions approaching maximum hospital capacity. Bolsonaro refused again.
“I will not decree it,” Bolsonaro said Monday in an act. “And you can be sure of one thing: my army won’t go to the streets to force people to stay home.”
Restrictions can already be found on the outskirts of the presidential palace after Federal District Governor Ibaneis Rocha implemented a curfew and a partial closure. Rocha warned on Tuesday that it could slow down harder, saving only pharmacies and hospitals, if people continue to ignore the rules. Currently, 213 people in the district are on the waiting list for an ICU bed.
Bolsonaro told reporters Monday that the curfew is “an inadmissible insult” and said even the WHO believes the closures are inadequate because they hurt the poor disproportionately. While the WHO acknowledges “profound negative effects,” it says some countries have had no choice but to impose heavy measures to curb transmission and that governments should take advantage of the extra time provided to try and track cases, while patients are cared for.
Such a nuance was lost on Bolsonaro. His government continues to look for silver bullet solutions that so far have only served to provoke false hopes. Any idea seems to justify its consideration, except that of public health experts.
The Bolsonaro government spent millions on the production and distribution of malaria pills, which have shown no benefit in rigorous studies. Still, Bolsonaro supported the drugs. He has also supported treatment with two drugs to fight the parasites, none of which have been shown to be effective. He again promoted his ability to avoid hospitalizations during a Wednesday event at the presidential palace.
Bolsonaro also sent a committee to Israel this week to evaluate an untested nasal spray that he described as “a miracle product.” Dalcolmo de Fiocruz, whose younger sister is currently in the ICU, called the trip “really pathetic.”
Camila Romano, a researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine at the University of São Paulo, hopes that a test developed by her laboratory to identify worrying variants, including P1, will help monitor and control its spread. He also wants to see stricter government measures and for citizens to do their part.
“Every day is a new surprise, a new variant, a city whose health system is collapsing,” Romano said. “It simply came to our notice then. If this is going to be the worst phase of all, we don’t know what will come next. “
___ Alvares reported from Brasilia. Associated Press video journalist Tatiana Pollastri contributed from Sao Paulo.