The state of São Paulo recorded a total of 1,021 deaths in 24 hours, according to the state health department on Tuesday. The number is the highest recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.
The deadliest day for the state in terms of the pandemic was seven days ago, on March 16, when 679 people died within 24 hours. In total, 68,623 people in São Paulo lost their lives to Covid-19.
The health system is also close to collapse, with 91.9% of beds in the state’s intensive care units occupied. On Monday, there were 29,039 Covid-19 patients admitted to São Paulo, 12,168 of them in intensive care unit beds. On March 1, the number of hospitalized patients was 15,977, almost half the current number.
On Monday, the Council of Municipal Health Secretariats of São Paulo warned that 54 cities only have oxygen for the rest of the week.
At a press conference on the same day, Governor João Doria announced the partnership with a private beverage company to build an oxygen factory in Ribeirão Preto, one of the largest cities in the state of São Paulo.
In an interview with CNN’s Julia Chatterley on Monday, São Paulo state governor João Doria called President Jair Bolsonaro a “psychopathic leader” and criticized the president’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are in one of those tragic moments in history, when millions of people pay a high price for having an unprepared and psychopathic leader in charge of a nation,” he said on CNN’s First Move.
Doria said that a large part of the deaths from the virus in Brazil could have been prevented if Bolsonaro had “acted with the responsibility that the position gives him”. He added that Bolsonaro made “unbelievable mistakes, the biggest of which was having a political dispute with the governors who are trying to protect the population”.
A little more background: Bolsonaro has repeatedly opposed the blockades and restrictive measures and criticized governors and mayors for implementing them. He was also seen complimenting multitudes of his supporters during the pandemic, without wearing a mask, and defended drugs such as hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus – a drug that has no proven effectiveness in combating Covid-19.
Brazil already has more than 12 million cases of coronavirus in the country, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
CNN’s Julia Chatterley and Hira Humayun contributed reporting to this post.