Tedros underscored that WHO has been working since New Year’s Eve 2019 to fight against the spread of COVID and will continue to do so until the pandemic is “truly over”. Even if transmission got turned around tomorrow, I think you're still going to see a big period of suffering, unfortunately.A laboratory scientist works on the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine. I think we're going to see those go up for some time to come. "Given the situation with rising case numbers given the situation with high ICU numbers, hospitalization numbers. So, we do see evidence of quite a number of the infections happening in Brazil," said Soucy. "The P1 variant seems to be extraordinarily transmissible as well as being more likely to reinfect people who had conventional COVID. The other factor is the dominance of the P1 variant of SARS-CoV-2, which was first detected in Japan in travellers who had returned from Brazil. This map from Brazil's public health research institution shows the ICU capacity per state in the country. Brazilian president Bolsonaro’s yearlong denial and mockery of the pandemic and his administration’s criminal failure to enact public health measures to protect the population have escalated into the current disaster." "So, the COVID-19 crisis has exploded atop what was already a dire situation. "This means that the famed unified health care system, established in 1989 and arguably the world’s most ambitious effort to realize the right to health, has been in shambles for years," said Birn in an email. In December 2016, before Bolsonaro came into power, the Brazilian government imposed a constitutional amendment that would freeze social spending for 20 years, which Birn calls "the world's harshest austerity measure." Brazil's COVID-19 resurgence is pushing hospitals to overflowingĪnne-Emanuelle Birn, an expert in Latin American public health and a professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, notes that cracks in Brazil's public health infrastructure date back well before the pandemic.Brazil posts record single-day toll of 3,251 coronavirus deaths.As supplies run low, a Brazilian town says it could be forced to take patients off ventilators.Brazil hospitals buckle in absence of national virus plan.It doesn't seem like his federal government really prioritized acquiring vaccines which is why now they've had little vaccination in that country," said Soucy. "The president there, Bolsonaro, has made some unkind comments about the mask wearing and vaccine efficacy. On top of that, Brazil has been slow to roll out the vaccines, which Bolsonaro has also publicly disparaged. Bolsonaro has opposed implementing lockdown restrictions or curfews and has gone to court to fight against lockdown measures imposed by local mayors and state governors, whom he calls "tyrants." He has also promoted misinformation discrediting masks-wearing and the severity of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)Įxperts say crisis has unfolded in large part due to the mishandling of the pandemic from Brazil's federal government, led by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. 22, 2021 file photo, a family member watches as public funeral service workers remove the body of 94-year-old woman who died from complications related to COVID-19 in her home, in Manaus, Amazonas state. The highest number of deaths are centred in the state of Amazonas, where 242 Indigenous people have died. Brazil's Indigenous People Articulation says that over 51,000 Indigenous people of Brazil have tested positive while 1,022 have died. The virus has also disproportionately burdened Brazil's Indigenous population, who have already been facing the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. "Inherently you would think there would be fewer deaths, but just the situation there just seems to have spiralled totally out of control," said Jean-Paul Soucy, an infectious disease epidemiologist and PhD student at the University of Toronto in a phone interview. Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox.
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