The health care system in Brazil has plunged into the worst crisis in its history, with doctors overwhelmed and patients dying while waiting in beds for intensive care, as the country’s Covid skeptical president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to lock up make what would save lives. .
As the daily number of infections and deaths soared to new heights this week, researchers from the leading health institute in Brazil, Fiocruz, said that South America’s largest country was facing an unparalleled “catastrophe”.
Covid-intensive care units in virtually all 26 states of Brazil and the federal district with the capital Brasília, are now at or dangerously close to capacity, the institute said, warning: “The situation is absolutely critical.”
Brazil’s far-right leader and his allies continue to reduce an outbreak that killed more than 287,000 people, the second highest number on earth, and, in part because of the more contagious P1 variant, is now accelerating to by far the deadliest. . phase.
“Our situation is not that critical. Compared to other countries, it is actually quite comfortable, “said Ricardo Barros, Bolsonaro’s leader in the lower house, on Wednesday, while 2,798 deaths and a record 90,830 new cases were reported.
But interviews with intensive care physicians in four of the worst-affected countries – Mato Grosso do Sul, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo – have lied about the claim.
“Things are desperate,” said Hermeto Paschoalick, head of the critical care unit in the Midwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where such facilities were 93% full this week.
Paschoalick, who works at a public hospital in the city of Dourados, said he saw his team members shed tears of exhaustion and despair as they struggled to cope with the cascade of patients. His 20-bed unit had one free bed on Tuesday – and requests to admit 22 critically ill Covid patients.
“It’s scary,” the doctor said, pointing to an even more dramatic situation in Ponta Porã, a city about 100 km along the Paraguayan border, where a hospital with 30 Covid ICU beds averages 10 patients. intubate per day.
In the state capital, Campo Grande, it was even worse. ‘I was told yesterday that there is a health clinic with 20 ambulances standing outside. The patients arrive from small towns in the interior and there is nowhere to place them – they just keep them in the ambulances, ‘said Paschoalick. One private hospital closed its doors because even its casualty department was full of Covid patients in ventilators.
Danilo Maksud, a cardiologist from São Paulo, said that the richest and most populous part of Brazil – where ICUs were 89% full with more than 11,000 Covid patients – was in the same predicament. “This is not chaos – we are far above chaos,” admitted the 39-year-old doctor who said all 20 of his ICU beds were occupied after a month-long boom.
Maksud suggested that a “complete exclusion” was probably the only way to stop the virus’ hooliganism, although Bolsonaro resisted the idea, apparently afraid of the impact it could have on the economy and his hopes for next year to be eligible again. With 212 million citizens, Brazil houses 2.7% of the world population, but has suffered more than 10% of its deaths in Covid.
“I do not know if I would ever imagine that we would experience a moment like this,” Maksud said on Wednesday after São Paulo suffered 679 deaths in one day. “It’s like we’re trapped in a hole and the walls are closing in on us.”
A thousand kilometers away, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, where ICUs were 96% full, the story was the same, with Covid bouncing off virtually the entire country at once.
“People are going around saying Brazil is going to collapse,” critical care physician Pedro Carvalho said Thursday morning as he began another 12 hours at a university hospital in the city of Petrolina on the river.
“But we’d already collapsed – completely collapsed,” said Carvalho, 41, whose hospital added ten new ICU beds on Monday morning and filled up by sunset.
According to the doctor, Bolsonaro’s ally said Brazilian hospitals were feeling comfortable. To call it fake news would be too kind. This is just a complete lie. They know very well how bad it is going, ”Carvalho complained.
He added: ‘I would like to invite these denial members to come and cover some shifts in our ICU – of course not to treat the patients, but to help us notify families that their loved ones have passed away. Maybe they might stop lying. ‘
The complicated life stories ended abruptly and unnecessarily, appeared at each of the ICUs. Paschoalick said most of those in his care were older than 60, but the little ones are also dying. ‘Right now I have three people in fans, including a 22-year-old woman and another who is 25. Both were pregnant when they arrived there. One lost the baby, the other managed to give birth. “Both were intubated and in a very bad condition,” he said.
André Machado, a doctor from Covid of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where critical care units are 100% full, said his hospital is so overloaded that he has to choose who gets the chance of survival in intensive care. “Today, 49 patients are in the A&E and waiting for a bed in the ICU,” he said on Thursday morning. There was only room for four.
Maksud, who works at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia Hospital in São Paulo, said he was not yet forced to play God, but that friends elsewhere were taking such calls and suspected that ‘rock down’ would soon arrive for him as well. .
“I feel scared, scared of what might happen next,” he said as his country stared into the abyss.