Brazil remains in critical condition
Brazil on Tuesday (23 March) recorded 3,251 deaths in just one day, with the statistic that for every 100 Brazilians who contract the COVID-19 virus, it is capable of infecting 123 people, according to data released by Imperial College London. The Brazilian variant has caused the country to remain in a critical situation, with intensive care units (ICUs) still completely full in several regions of the country. The WHO has called on the Bolsanaro government, the legislature and the courts to be much "firmer" in dealing with this new threat and recommended that they continue to listen to scientists. The other countries bordering Brazil and those with direct flights have decided to suspend flights or try to overcome the epidemiological barrier.
One of the affiliates of the World Health Organisation, the Pan American Health Organisation, stated through its president, Carissa Etienne, that the new strain is moving much faster and that Brazil is currently the centre of the global pandemic, "unfortunately, the serious situation in Brazil is affecting neighbouring countries". Etienne stated that cases are on the rise in the border area with Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. The regions of Acre, Rondonia and Rio Grande do Sul have no ICU beds available, and almost half of the regions have 90% of the intensive care units occupied. "April may be even worse than March" in Brazil, he said. The reason is a cocktail of factors: "The high rate of transmission, the number of cases among the youngest, the slow pace of vaccination due to vaccine shortages, mortality, exhaustion of health workers and, most sadly, the number of deaths," Dr Margareth Dalcomo told O'Globo media. The South American giant has more than 300,000 deaths, with 210 million inhabitants, second only to the United States as the country with the most deaths.
"Brazil is the example of everything that could go wrong in a pandemic. We have a country with leaders who, in addition to not implementing control measures, undermined the measures we had, such as social distance, the use of masks and, for a long time, vaccines. We became a global threat" is the opinion of Denise Garret, who is an epidemiologist and was head of the US Department of Health's Center for Disease Control (CDC). "One year later, we are in the worst place we could be, with transmission at an all-time high, with an extremely alarming variant and with a health system on the verge of collapse," said Garret, who is currently vice president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington.
President Jair Bolsonaro has decided to create a national pandemic monitoring committee, which will be composed of members of the national government, parliamentarians and regional governments. There is currently an ongoing business lawsuit, 1,500 economists, bankers and businessmen published the lawsuit over the weekend, demanding that Bolsonaro confine the entire country and end the narrative of "the debate on life and the economy". The president announced the use of drugs that have not yet been proven to have effects against COVID-19, such as chloroquine and invermectin. "We are dealing with the possibility of early treatment, this is the responsibility of the health minister, who respects the right and duty of the doctor to use drugs to treat those infected," said President Bolsonaro at a press conference.
Within the political scenario in Brazil, there is great expectation with the entry of Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president, into national politics. After the courts restored his political rights, "many of these deaths could have been avoided if the government had done the basics. The art of governing is not easy, it is the art of making decisions. If the president respected the people, he would have created a crisis committee in March 2020," Lula said. In 2022 there will be presidential elections in Brazil.
Latin America Coordinator: José Antonio Sierra.
