While a new variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the country, many Brazilians continue to challenge the mobility restrictions of mask mandates, following the example of President Jair Bolsonaro, who recently said that people need to “stop being sissy” and “complain” of the virus.
The consequences of this combination are deadly, experts say. “We are going through the worst scenario since the beginning of the pandemic. You just need to look at the trends in the average number of deaths,” Gonzalo Vecina Neto, professor of Public Health at the University of São Paulo, recently told Reuters television. “This could have been avoided and the most important factor is the meetings”.
Brazil broke its own record three times this month for the number of deaths in a 24-hour period. On Wednesday, the Brazilian Ministry of Health recorded a devastating new record – 2,286 lives lost to the virus. In total, it is known that more than 270,000 people died due to Covid-19, making Brazil the second largest number of deaths in the country, after the United States.
In 22 of the 26 Brazilian states, ICU occupation exceeded 80%. In the south of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, hospital patients must queue to wait for beds, since occupancy rates in intensive care units exceed 103%. The neighboring state of Santa Catarina has already exceeded 99% of the occupation and is on the verge of bankruptcy, as cases increase throughout the state.
A hospital in the capital of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, is already full. David Molin, the head nurse at the hospital, told CNN that his team is exhausted and overwhelmed.
“I was here during the first wave and it wasn’t like that. We are completely overwhelmed, with our occupancy rate over 100%. Many of the patients who are waiting for an ICU cannot, ”Molina told CNN during a telephone interview.
Health workers blame the meetings
Molina and other health professionals blame the recent increase in cases of Covid-19 at large parties and meetings that began on New Year’s Eve and continued during the carnival holiday before Lent and to this day. Many of them were carried out in defiance of local city and state restrictions.
Last week, Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes announced a new curfew for bars and restaurants across the city, limiting opening hours from 6 am to 5 pm. But hundreds of people were left out anyway – 230 fines related to curfew and closings were issued from Friday to Saturday only, according to the city government. In a bar, more than 200 partygoers, mostly without a mask, were found at a party that lasted seven hours, reported CNN Brasil, a CNN affiliate.
Many municipal and state health officials and lawmakers blame Bolsonaro’s government for undermining his efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus. And the National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) asked the federal government to adopt stricter measures to support hospitals and enforce social distance.
“The health care system in Brazil is on the verge of collapse,” São Paulo governor João Doria told CNN’s Becky Anderson during a recent interview. “There is no national coordination to combat the pandemic in Brazil. It would be important for the president and governors to send the same message to the population, but unfortunately that does not happen in Brazil.
The issue of social distance measures and blockades has become a political football in Brazil. While Doria ordered non-essential deals to close for two weeks in his state last weekend, Bolsonaro says that such restrictions sink Brazil’s economy and lead to an increase in suicides and depression. He made disobedience to health guidelines a source of pride, congratulating farm workers at an event last week for not staying at home “like cowards.”
“We have to face our problems. Stop being sissy, stop crying, how long will they keep crying? We have to face the problems, respecting the elderly, people with diseases, chronic conditions. But where will Brazil end if we all stop? ” he said.
This week, Bolsonaro declared that he had the “power” to declare a national blockade – but he never would. “My army is not going to force people to stay home,” he said.
Fears about the new variant
With Brazilian hospitals overburdened and government officials divided over blockade measures, the country has few defenses against a variant of the coronavirus that can be even more contagious.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, suggests that even people who have had the coronavirus may be vulnerable. The same study showed that variant P.1 could escape immunity from previous Covid-19 infection by up to 61%.
This variant is already prevalent in patients with Covid-19 in at least six Brazilian states, according to a study released earlier this month by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), a research institution of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. P.1 has also been detected in the United States, the United Kingdom and neighboring Venezuela.
“The emergence of new variants, which combine the potential to be more transmissible and the absence of broad and articulated mitigation and suppression measures, is highly worrying”, wrote the study’s authors, asking Brazil to encourage behaviors that limit viral spread .
“The data showing the prevalence of this variant in several states and its wide dissemination throughout the country, as well as the challenges presented by its high rate of transmission, reinforce the immediate need for the adoption of non-pharmaceutical measures to slow down or spread it and the increase in cases. “
Felipe Naveca, a virologist and researcher at Fiocruz Amazônia and one of the main authors of the study, told CNN that the Covid-19 virus and the different variants and strains are likely to become stronger if not stopped.
“This is what viruses do: they evolve, they get stronger. The only way to prevent it is to contain its spread, so we need restrictive measures – there is no other solution. Even if the government decrees a national blockade, we need the population to join. The action of each one of us will impact everyone ”, said Naveca.
Vaccination
Hope may be on the way, in the form of vaccines. But the implementation of vaccination in Brazil was slow compared to other countries, including others in the region, such as Chile and Mexico.
In January, the health regulatory agency Anvisa authorized the emergency use of the Sinovac and Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccines. Since then, about 4% of the 211 million Brazilian citizens have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to data from the Ministry of Health of Brazil, and 2.3 million have received two doses.
According to the Ministry of Health, Brazil is in negotiations to also buy the Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, Sputinik and Covaxin vaccines, although only the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine among them has authorization from Anvisa.
Bolsonaro has long promoted the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine as the only one he would support, rejecting and discrediting many of the other vaccines on the market, including that of Pfizer. Brazilian Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello even declined an August offer from Pfizer to buy up to 70 million doses of his vaccine.
“Pfizer says this very clearly in the contract, ‘we are not responsible for any side effects’ – if you become a crocodile, the problem is yours,” Bolsonaro said in December. “If you become Superman, or grow a beard like a woman, or if a man’s voice gets high, they say they have nothing to do with it.”
But a study by the New England Journal of Medicine now suggests that the Pfizer / BionTech vaccine could “efficiently” neutralize the P.1 variant. The news came as Bolsonaro held a virtual meeting on Monday with Pfizer Global CEO Albert Bourla and other executives to negotiate the purchase of 100 million vaccines.
“I appreciate this meeting and recognize Pfizer as a major global company,” Bolsonaro said during a rally excerpt posted on their official Twitter account. “We would like to close these deals with you, especially given the aggressiveness of this virus in Brazil.”
For now, Brazil’s failure to contain the virus is increasingly a cautionary tale for the world. Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, said at a news conference last week that he feared that the increase in cases in the country could be repeated elsewhere.
“History in Brazil can and will be repeated elsewhere if we stop implementing the measures we need to implement them,” he said. “Countries will retreat to the third and fourth peaks if we are not careful.”
For Molina, the exhausted Santa Catarina nurse, Brazil’s future looks more bleak than ever.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think we have learned our lesson,” said Molina. “We [health workers] they are tired, exhausted and sick. We feel powerless. We need more coordinated action if we are to prevent this from happening again.
Reporting by journalist Marcia Reverdosa from São Paulo and Flora Charner from CNN in Atlanta.