A leading scientist warned that the snowball-shaped outbreak of COVID-19 in Brazil has the potential to undo the progress made in the fight against the global pandemic.
Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University who is following the crisis, asked the international community to pressure the Brazilian government to more aggressively contain the new variant, known as P.1., Which is spreading rapidly there, the Guardian said.
“The world must speak out loudly about the risks that Brazil represents in combating the pandemic,” said Nicolelis, who spent most of last year in São Paulo.
“What is the use of resolving the pandemic in Europe or the United States, if Brazil remains a breeding ground for this virus?”
Nicolelis warned that failure to prevent the virus from spreading could allow it to continue mutating into more dangerous variants.
“If you allow the virus to proliferate at the levels at which it is proliferating here, you open the door for new mutations to occur and even more lethal variants to appear,” he said.
The scientist also criticized the leadership of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly downplayed the crisis, warning that it has international implications.
“The policies he is not putting in place endanger the fight against the pandemic across the planet,” he said.
Brazil currently has the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, with more than 257,000 victims, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The country faced its most lethal week, with an average of nearly 1,200 virus-related victims a day, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been more than 10.6 million confirmed cases in the country, the data show.
Wired Poles