Brazil, hit by the Covid-19 variant, surpasses us in daily cases and deaths

The average daily death toll from seven days in Brazil has risen to 1,573, while the rate in the US is falling – to 1,566 a day – amid fewer cases and more vaccinations, according to Our World in Data at Oxford University. The U.S. peaked in January at just over 3,400 daily deaths.

As many countries face the worst pandemic, Brazil is facing one of its worst humanitarian crises as deaths and infections increase, registering nearly 1,000 new cases every 20 minutes over the past week – more than 70,000 per day.

Public health specialists blame part of the rapid spread of the P.1 strain of the Amazon city of Manaus, which studies show is more contagious and better able to re-infect humans than previous versions of the disease. . Mortality also increased as Brazil’s health system struggled to cope, meaning patients who could have been rescued were left in chaotic hospital corridors to die or – in the worst cases – suffocated to death due to oxygen deficiency.

According to Brazil, there are hundreds of new Covid-19 variants in Brazil, and they have warned that other more dangerous versions may appear, the longer the disease remains to care for and mutate, and threaten to undermine the progress of other countries against the pandemic .

“It looks like a nightmare,” said Mohamed Parrini, chief executive of Moinhos de Vento Hospital in the southern city of Porto Alegre. He rushed to convert other wards into temporary ICUs. “The saddest thing is when you see that the people around you are also intubating – men, husbands and uncles of employees.”

Like many doctors across the country, Mr. Parrini said he sees more younger patients – many in their thirties and forties – than during the first spate of cases in Brazil in the middle of last year. Researchers are still trying to understand why.

Covid-19 has killed more than 260,000 people in Brazil, including more than 10,000 in the past week. It places the country just behind the US, which has more than 525,000 deaths.

Public health specialists also blamed President Jair Bolsonaro for failing to secure more vaccinations and reducing the risk of the disease. The former army captain recently told Brazilians to go back to work and ‘stop whining’.

Brazil vaccinated only about 4% of its population. This means that cases and deaths are likely to remain higher in Brazil in the coming months, epidemiologists say.

The US, Brazil and India led to the total number of daily deaths for each month of the pandemic, but the first few, when the virus began its deadly march from China to South Korea and Europe.

Public hospitals in the capital Brasília and in more than 20 of the 26 states of Brazil have now reached full capacity or are close to the rise of beds in their ICU departments. Hospitals in Brazil, the Amazon and the south have turned to renting refrigerated containers to store corpses after their mortuaries on the premises were full. Meanwhile, cemeteries in some cities like Campo Grande in the Midwest have dug up their parking lots to make more room for graves.

As part of its population of 213 million people, Brazil has so far suffered fewer deaths than the US, as well as Mexico, Peru and several European countries. But the rapid spate of deaths in Brazil – and the fact that it is at odds with the global trend – has raised deep concerns about the country’s fate as well as the potential of the P.1 strain to cause similar devastation across the region. .

A recent study showed that 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 capable of re-infecting humans.

Researchers believe P.1 only appeared in Manaus in early November and by January, the new strain was already responsible for 85% of the new Covid-19 infections in the city.

Chaos soon followed. After a number of patients suffocated to death in Manaus in January after a nationwide shortage of oxygen, a convoy of trucks from Venezuela made the 26-hour drive south through the rainforest to deliver supplies. Prosecutors also investigated reports last month about intubate patients in the region being tied to their beds following a shortage of sedatives.

While the infection rate and daily death toll over the past few weeks have shown signs of a fall in the state of Amazonas, other southern countries are still facing their darkest days as P.1 continues to spread. São Paulo, the largest and richest city in Brazil, has called on volunteer doctors to help relieve exhausted medical staff, as the occupancy rate for the first time is 80% of the ICU.

Brazil began its vaccination campaign on January 17, but it was slow. There are mixed signs about how Brazil’s main vaccine, the Chinese CoronaVac shot, and other Covid-19 vaccines will work at P.1. According to the Butantan Institute and Fiocruz, Brazilian research centers that manufacture the CoronaVac vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca disc, respectively, appear to be both effective against P.1.

A laboratory study this week showed that Pfizer Inc.’s

vaccine could neutralize P.1. However, another small study this month showed that plasma from people vaccinated with CoronaVac five months ago could not effectively neutralize the strain.

Write to Samantha Pearson at [email protected] and Luciana Magalhaes at [email protected]