Brazil is facing a recorded number of deaths, and the spread of much more contagious COVID-19 variant may lead to reinfection.
Coronavirus has already Brazil with numerous deaths and despair these are one of the worst in the world. Now, after a year in a pandemic, Brazil is meeting another wrenching record.
None of the nations has that has experienced such a huge outbreak is still grappling with the record-setting death tolls and a health care system on the brink of the collapse. Other severely hit countries have taken steps towards normalacy.
However, Brazil is battling a much more contagious variant that has taken over one major city and is spreading towards others.
Brazil has recorded 1,700 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday which is a huge one-day toll of the pandemic.
“Such a huge acceleration of the epidemic in different states is moving towards the collapse of the public and private hospital systems, that may soon become the scenario of every part of Brazil”, According to the National Association of Health Secretaries.
Another matter of concern is that the variant has slipped the borders of Brazil, and is showing up in two dozen of other countries, and in small number it can also be founded in United States.
Brazilians hoped that they saw the worst outbreak last year. Manaus, the capital of the northern state of Amazonas, was hit too hard during the months of April and May that the scientists were confused if the city could have reached the herd of immunity.
The scientists discovered a new variant on January that was known as P.1 that was a dominant in the state. Its danger seemed to be vivid as the hospitals in the city ran out of oxygen amidst the crush of patients, suffocating to death.
Dr. Antonio Souza remained haunted by the horrified faces of the colleagues and relatives of patients when it became clear the oxygen supply of Manaus had been exhausted. He still thinks about the patient he sedated, to spare an agonizing death to him, when the oxygen ran out at another clinic.
He said, “Nobody must ever make this type of decision”, it’s quite terrible.
Maria Glaudimar, a nurse in Manaus, exclaimed that she felt trapped in a nightmare early this year having no end in sight. The patients and their relatives pleaded for oxygen whereas all the beds for intensive care were full. Her son caught tuberculosis after contracting COVID-19 and her husband shed 22 pounds since he fought the virus. “Nobody was prepared for this”, she said. It was a horror film for her family.
Margareth Dalcolm, a pulmonologist, said failure of Brazil to mount a robust vaccination campaign has set the stage for the current crisis. She added, “We must be vaccinating more than a million people each day”. And this is the reality. We are not as we don’t know how to deal with it, but because we don’t have enough vaccines.
Just roughly 2.6% of the Brazilian population had received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, as per the health ministry. About 1.5 million people only have received both doses. Chinese made CoronaVac is being used in the country. The laboratory test suggests that it is less effective against P.1 than against other such variants.
Ester Sabino, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Sao Paulo said, “You may vaccinate your complete population and control the problem only for the short term, if in another place of the world, a new variant appears”. “It’ll get there one day”.
The Brazilians have just a little faith in a government led by a president who has just sabotaged the lockdowns and has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus and has promoted remedies long after the scientists marked they didn’t work clearly.
Just last week, the president spoke about the masks that are amongst the best defences to fight against contagion, and claimed that these are harmful for children and causes headaches and difficulty to concentrate.
The vaccine projections by Mr Pazuello have also met with scepticism. Last week, the government placed an order for 20 million doses of Indian vaccine that hasn’t completed the clinical trials. This prompted a federal prosecutor to argue in a legal filing that the purchase of $286 million “puts millions of lives at a risk”.
Even it will prove out to be effective, will be late for many.
COVID-19 had eased somewhat in Amazonas; however, it worsened in most part of Brazil. The scientists have scrambled to get more information about the variant to track its speed across the nation. But fewer resources for testing have kept them behind the curve since they try to analyse the role it is playing.
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