Crisis in Brazil: Porto Alegre rehearses scenes from Manaus and suffers from health chaos

RÍO DE JANEIRO.– If in 2020 Manaus has become the postcard of the Brazilian disaster, with a new peak this year, this time Porto Alegre, in the southern region of the country, begins to repeat the Amazonian capital as one of the references of the new health collapse.

For a week, the capital of the state of Rio de Grande do Sul (on the border with Argentina) maintained the 100% occupancy of intensive care units – which has not happened since the start of the pandemic-, in a city of less than a million and a half inhabitants which for the first time exceeded the threshold of 30 daily deaths due to the coronavirus.

Mauro Weiss, 63, urologist and clinical director of Moinhos de Vento, the largest private hospital in Porto Alegre, had to take a drastic decision. After the institution had an unusual situation eight days ago, with 12 patients dying on the same day, the director rented a refrigerated container to store up to eight bodies, as the hospital has a mortuary with a capacity of three people.

“It was a humanitarian decision, not to cause panicWeiss explained in an interview with LA NACION. “The deceased patients were left dead in intensive care beds, waiting up to 12 hours for the funeral. In addition to the humanitarian problem, the preservation of bodies, we have kept intensive care beds that are unusable. And today, every bed is precious, ”he said.

Moinhos de Vento is busy with its 84 intensive care units for Covid-19. The hospitalizations of new patients in recent days, said the director of the hospital, only intervened before new deaths.

Porto Alegre has recorded more than 2,500 deaths since the start of the pandemic and more than 110,000 confirmed Covid-19 infections. The capital gaucho It is one of the eight Brazilian state capitals that currently have more than 90% intensive care bed occupancy.

This week, 154 patients were waiting for a bed in Porto Alegre. The wait of many patients for a place in the hospital places the doctors of Moinhos de Vento and those of other institutions in an ethical dilemma.

“Our professionals choose who will occupy a bed based on which patient has the best chance of survival. It’s very sad. We choose between life and death between people “Weiss admitted.

Due to the shortage of beds, some hospitals in Porto Alegre have opened new beds by converting temporarily unused resources. On February 24, when the city was already suffering from hospital overcrowding, its mayor, Sebastián Melo, gave a speech in which he called on the population to “contribute their lives” to save the economy.

Give your contribution. Contribute with your family, your city, your life so that we can save the economy of the municipality of Porto Alegre “, implored Melo, in a statement putting him in touch with the Brazilian president of the extreme right, Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil, which is on the verge of 265,000 coronavirus deaths, is going through the most critical moment of the pandemic, with a simultaneous deterioration of health in all parts of the country as never before. The mutation of the virus that originated in November in Manaus, called P1 and detected in at least three different regions of the country, has been pointed out by health experts as one of the factors responsible for the worsening of the disease in recent weeks.

The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) revealed a disturbing study last Thursday. Out of 1,000 contagion cases analyzed in eight states, the Brazilian strain, up to 2.2 times more contagious than its predecessors, has been detected in more than 50% of all cases, data that would indicate how far P1 is spreading. throughout Brazil.

The authorities in Porto Alegre have already detected this week cases of community transmission of the variant originating in Manaus. Weiss reported that patients arriving at Moinhos de Vento “get worse”, with more compromised lungs. This is due, in part, to the delay in accessing an intensive care bed. The average length of intensive care last year was two to three weeks and now it has dropped to around a month, the hospital director explained.

“Businessmen and politicians were getting job applications. Now I know they are getting requests for intensive care beds in a hospital, ”Weiss said.

Faced with the worsening of the situation, institutions and health professionals began to bet on raising awareness in society to avoid an even worse scenario. In the face of denialist rhetoric and the discrediting of science and vaccines by some Brazilians, Weiss explained, a group called “United for Health Against Collapse” has emerged which seeks to warn of the risk of disaster. humanitarian.

“Politics disturbed, disturbed in the midst of the crisis. Strong, influential people were needed to give correct information to a population which has a considerable part with a low cultural level. The moment a rule [por Bolsonaro] He says a vaccine can turn someone into Yacaré, there will be people who will spread that the vaccine is bad, ”Weiss said.

For the clinical director of Moinhos de Vento, with Unidos por la Salud, it is a question of going “beyond the figures” of Brazil. “Just as the hospital is at its structural limit, the medical profession is on the verge of exhaustion,” warned the doctor.

“We have the feeling that we fought a lot and that we did not achieve the victory. We want there to be a reality shock: more of the population needs to have access to testimonials and videos, which bring the truth to what is going on. The container is not a lie ”.

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