Brazil backs from the virus brink but remains at risk
For most of this month, intensive care units across Brazil were at or near capacity amid a crush of COVID-19 patients, and sedatives needed to intubate patients dwindled. The country's biggest cemetery had so many corpses to bury that gravediggers worked hours past sundown. But Brazil has stepped back from the edge - at least for the present time - as burial and hospital services no more face collapse. It has ceased to be the virus' global epicenter, as its death toll ebbed and was overtaken by India's surge. Experts warn, however, that the problem remains precarious, and caution is warranted.
The number of states with ICU capacity above 90% has slipped to 10, from 17 per month ago, according to data from the state-run Fiocruz medical research institute. And nighttime burials at Vila Formosa and three other cemeteries in Sao Paulo were suspended Thursday, after fourteen days of declining deaths.
In this March 4, 2021, COVID-19 patients rest in a field hospital built in the sports coliseum on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. (Andre Penner) That comes as cold comfort in a country where some 2,400 persons died every day in the last week, a lot more than triple the number in the U.S. Brazil surpassed the grim milestone of 400,000 confirmed deaths on Thursday - a number considered by experts to be a significant undercount, partly because many cases were overlooked, especially early in the pandemic.
The seven-day average has retreated from a lot more than 3,100 deaths in mid-April, but Fiocruz warned in a bulletin Wednesday that it may plateau -and at a straight more impressive range than it did this past year. "Our goal now could be to make the numbers keep going down instead of stabilizing. That's the most important thing," said Pedro Hallal, an epidemiologist and coordinator of Brazil's major COVID-19 testing program. "It's good that they are heading down, but let's not assume that this will be the last wave. There is hope that it'll be the last wave, as a result of the vaccine, but that needs to be confirmed."
Given the slow vaccine rollout, there are millions more Brazilians susceptible to infection, Hallal added, and the threshold scientists believe is required to stop uncontrolled spread - 70% or higher of the populace with immunity through vaccination or past infection - remains distant.
Brazil's death toll of 401,186 is the world's second-highest, with the majority recorded in just the last four months as a far more contagious variant swept the country. In the thick of the Southern Hemisphere's summer, crowds gathered and people boarded public transport in droves as mayors and governors relaxed the restrictions on activity that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro fervently opposes.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, center, arrives for a press conference in capital Brasilia. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)Some mayors and governors tightened such measures over the last month, helping to revert the surge of infections, Fiocruz said. However, they have begun reopening again amid the first, encouraging data.
Valter Gomes, a 33-year-old textile worker in central Sao Paulo, has noted more persons riding trains and reopening shops. "Often the pandemic gets worse just because a lot of people who've the chance to stay home don't. Each goes out instead," he said. "If everyone contributed, I don't believe there would be such a large crisis of having to stop work, having these lockdowns."
In this March 30 photo, commuters wearing protective face masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ride in a crowded public bus, in Rio de Janeiro. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado) A woman flashes a V sign as police break up a social gathering during an procedure against unlawful and clandestine gatherings in Sao Paulo. (AP Photo/Marcelo Chello)
Researchers at Imperial College London this week said Brazil's transmission rate has already reached its lowest rate in months.But the rate remains high, said Domingos Alves, an epidemiologist tracking COVID-19 data, and he argues it's too soon to roll back restrictions. Brazil risks repeating the errors of Europe which may have seen third surges, for the reason that country's decline in infections isn't yet sustained, he said.
"The situation in every Brazilian states requires adoption of more drastic actions to support the virus," said Alves, an adjunct professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. "The quantity of cases is very high and we aren't doing anything to contain the virus."
Brazil's number of confirmed cases is widely thought to be an undercount, and the virus can be gaining ground among its neighbors. The ICUs in Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, have already been pushed to critical levels. Peru, Venezuela, Uruguay and Colombia have observed cases jump in recent weeks. Health authorities have cited the circulation of variants, including a strain believed to have started in Brazil's Amazon, as a contributing factor.
"It's no surprise that lots of countries inside our region have tightened public health measures by extending curfews, limiting re-openings and imposing new stay-at-home orders," said Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization. "These decisions are never easy, but based about how infections are surging, that is exactly what must happen."Such advice remain anathema to Bolsonaro; last weekend he called lockdown measures "absurd" and suggested he could order the army into the streets to restore order.
The president has constantly downplayed the condition and dispensed false hope by touting unproven drugs, which critics say only put into the country's death toll. This week the Senate started an investigation in to the government's alleged failures in managing the pandemic.The troubled response has been reflected in health minister turnover; the fourth man to occupy the post through the pandemic, Dr. Marcelo Queiroga, took over last month.
He has spoken of the necessity to boost vaccine supply, personally consults with scientists and has up to now displayed the autonomy to market mask use and social distancing. That marks a shift from his predecessor, an active-duty general who made explicit his deference to Bolsonaro's wishes on health policy.
Brazil's new Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga adjusts his protective nose and mouth mask prior to the start of a press conference. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Queiroga told reporters this week that the reduction in hospitalizations has eased demand for oxygen and sedatives for intubation. Stopgap donations from big businesses and the governments of Canada and Spain also shored up supply. MEDICAL Ministry can be preparing a tender for the acquisition of more sedatives.
The minister has stopped short of embracing public health experts' demands lockdowns and restrictions on activity, and hasn't eliminated make use of drugs that rigorous testing has demonstrated to be ineffective. But he is showing recognition that Brazil isn't yet free and clear. "We remain in a very serious moment of the pandemic," Queiroga said. "Deaths are falling, but you may still find a very high number." ___ AP videojournalist Tatiana Pollastri contributed from Sao Paulo.
