Covid-19 variant in Brazil overwhelms local hospitals, hits younger patients

The new variant, known as P.1, is 1.4 to 2.2 times more contagious than versions of the virus previously found in Brazil, and 25% to 61% more able to infect people infected by an earlier strain. infected, re-infected, according to a study released Tuesday.

With massive vaccination across the region, countries like Brazil run the risk of becoming a breeding ground for new powerful versions of the virus that could make current Covid-19 vaccines less effective, health experts have warned.

A more protracted pandemic could also have devastating economic consequences for countries like Brazil, slowing growth and expanding the country’s already large debt pile as the government expands payments to the poor, economists said.

“We are facing a dramatic situation here – the health systems of many states in Brazil are already collapsing and others will be in the next few days,” said Eliseu Waldman, an epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo.

Several physicians reported an increase in younger patients in their Covid-19 ward, many in their thirties and forties without underlying health problems. In Peru, some doctors said patients get sick faster, just three or four days after the first symptoms appear, compared to an average of nine to 14 days last year.

“The virus behaves differently,” said Rosa Lopez, a doctor in the intensive care unit at Guillermo Almenara Irigoyen Hospital in Lima. “It’s really aggressive … the situation is very difficult, really terrible.”

The Amazon tribe, P.1, originated late last year in the Brazilian city of Manaus and quickly attracted the attention of Brazilian and international scientists who rushed to map its distribution. The large number of mutations of the variety on the vein protein, which helps the virus to penetrate into cells, has caused concern.

“We are at the worst moment. I would not be surprised if P.1 is now all over Brazil,” said Felipe Naveca, a researcher from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, who studied the new strain. He estimated that Brazil already has hundreds of new Covid-19 variants, although P.1. is the most worrying so far, he said.

However, researchers do not yet have the reason why more younger people get sick and whether P.1 is more deadly, or just more contagious.

“The recent epidemic in Manaus has hampered the city’s healthcare system which has led to inadequate access to medical care,” the authors of the study in P.1, released on Tuesday, wrote by Nuno Faria, a professor of virus evolution at Oxford University and Imperial College London. “Thus, we cannot determine whether the estimated increase in relative mortality risk is due to P.1 infection, stress on the Manaus healthcare system, or both,” they wrote.

A study led by Mr. Naveca, released last week, showed that the P.1 strain was in some cases about ten times higher than the original versions of the virus that spread most of the pandemic in Brazil. But the group of international scientists led by Mr. Faria concluded that it was first possible to conduct detailed clinical investigations to determine whether P.1 infection was associated with increased virus burden.

Researchers in South Africa struggled with the same questions when they studied another new variant, B.1.351. Doctors there have also reported an increase in hospitalizations and deaths of younger patients, but researchers have concluded that more younger people become seriously ill because more people are generally infected. The likelihood of younger people dying increased, they said, because hospitals were overwhelmed, not because the variant itself was more deadly.

Another possible explanation is that the virus has already spread through much older hosts, says Francisco Cardoso, a specialist in infectious diseases at the Emílio Ribas Hospital in São Paulo, who also noticed an increase in younger patients.

‘Very [older patients] ‘have already had contact with the virus and they have gained some protection through antibodies or are already dead,’ he said.

Latin America has been one of the world’s Covid-19 hotspots since the start of the pandemic, but over the past few days, doctors in Brazil have become increasingly desperate, describing horrific scenes across the country. While the new tribe is largely to blame, there is also a lack of preparation and prevention by the governments of the region, health specialists have said.

Hospitals operate in nearly two-thirds of the Brazilian states with an occupancy rate of more than 80% under the ICU. After numerous patients suffocated to death in Manaus earlier this year when oxygen was depleted, prosecutors are investigating reports from another Amazon city that intubation patients were tied to their beds following a shortage of sedatives.

In Peru, where the government tracked down the P.1 strain, hospitals were quickly pushed out of capacity as infections escalated in January after one of the worst outbreaks in the world last year. Doctors now select from dozens of patients when an ICU bed opens, while Chile donates life-saving oxygen amid acute shortages.

The scenes come as the US and parts of Europe celebrate declining infection rates amid mass vaccination campaigns, proving a wider immunity gap between rich and poorer countries. While more than 15% of the people in the US received a Covid-19 shot, Brazil administered only 3% of its population vaccinations. Peru and Colombia vaccinated less than 1%.

If Latin America does not find a way to speed up its vaccination campaigns, other countries such as Colombia and Bolivia that have seen the recent slowdown in new infections could also fall victim to the new variant, infectious disease specialists said.

The longer the disease is left behind in countries like Brazil, the greater the chance that new variants will emerge that reduce the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, which also pose a threat to countries that have already immunized their populations.

“Unless everyone in the world gets the vaccine soon, none of us will be protected,” said Patricia Garcia, a former health and epidemiologist. “It will never stop.”

Cesar Palacios, a 44-year-old pediatrician in northern Piura, Peru, lost his parents and younger sister to the disease earlier this year. He spent ten days in a ventilator after becoming ill himself. The disease increased rapidly as his blood oxygen levels dropped in dangerous areas, to 86% just a day after his first symptom. A few days later he was in an ICU.

‘If you’re sitting on a mechanical fan, do you think I’m going to live? Am I going to die? Says Dr. Palacios. “I had no other option. I was so scared. ”

While Peru has introduced a nightclub in Lima and other states with high infections, Brazilian cities such as São Paulo and the capital Brasília have imposed stricter restrictions in recent days.

But many Brazilians defied the rules and warned the president of the country. Right-wing leader Jair Bolsonaro slammed the disease and attacked state governors for locking them up, accusing them of destroying local businesses.

The military police in São Paulo raided about 50 businesses that refused to comply over the weekend, including a group of 190 elderly Brazilians who were holding a clandestine party.

—Luciana Magalhaes in São Paulo and Gabriele Steinhauser in Johannesburg contributed to this article.

Write to Samantha Pearson at [email protected] and Ryan Dube at [email protected]