Brazil recorded 3,869 new deaths from COVID-19 in past 24 hours, a new record

Brazil’s National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass), which brings together health officials from the country’s 27 states, has reported a new record number of daily deaths from the COVID-19 disease in the country.

In the past 24 hours, 3,869 people who had contracted the coronavirus have died and 90,638 new cases of the infected have been recorded, according to the report released this Wednesday afternoon. The previous record for daily deaths was recorded on Tuesday and was 3,780 deaths.

March is by far the worst month in the pandemic in Brazil, with more than 66,500 deaths, and experts predict another tragic month in April, with hospitals overwhelmed and sometimes forced to choose who receives care.

From March 1 to March 31, 66,573 covid deaths were recorded, 90.7% more than the 32,881 in July 2020, the deadliest month to date. Total deaths since the first to die a year ago stand at 321,515, just behind the United States.

“Never has a single event caused so many deaths in thirty days in the history of Brazil,” he told the AFP Doctor Miguel Nicolelis, former coordinator of the scientific committee formed by the northeastern states to deal with the pandemic. “We are in the worst time, with the highest number of deaths and cases, which indicates that April will still be very bad, ”said epidemiologist Ethel Maciel, professor at the Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES).

From March 21 to 27, the week with the most cases (nearly 540,000) was also recorded, which means that in two weeks more people will surely have to be hospitalized. Since the start of the pandemic, 12,748,747 people have been infected in this country of 212 million inhabitants.

But hospitals are already saturated: 18 of Brazil’s 27 states have more than 90% of their covid-19 intensive care unit (ICU) beds occupied and seven others have 84% to 89% occupancy, according to the latest Foundation. Fiocruz newsletter.

Several states have started adopting protocols to allocate available beds to patients with the best chance of survival. “We have arrived at a very tragic situation, similar to what happened in Italy” early last year, Maciel said.

At least 230 people with covid or suspected of having the virus died in March while awaiting bed in an intensive care unit in the metropolitan area of ​​São Paulo, the economic capital of the country, according to a report by TV Globo.

Fear increases as the southern winter approaches, when there is a greater demand for hospitalizations due to other respiratory illnesses. “We can have a confluence of these demands with very high rates of covid, causing a perfect storm” in the healthcare system, said Nicolelis. “The pandemic is totally out of control and the possibility of reaching 4,000 deaths per day is very real as of this week. And the prospect of reaching half a million dead in July is already plausible “he added.

Social mobility, new variants

The chaotic management of the pandemic this month caused the departure of the Minister of Health, a soldier with no experience in this field, replaced by cardiologist Marcelo Queiroga, fourth incumbent in a year. Following the first meeting of the committee recently formed by the government and Congress to fight the pandemic, Queiroga on Wednesday asked Brazilians to wear a mask and “maintain isolation” during the Easter holidays.

But President Jair Bolsonaro, who from the start underestimated the severity of the disease and encouraged crowds without masks, once again criticized the social isolation measures, because of their negative effects on the economy. “We are not going to solve this problem by staying at home,” the president said, unlike leaders in Congress and his own minister.

The confinements in Brazil were still partial and little respected. Some states, like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, have decreed extended vacations this month, but the measure may be counterproductive given the large number of people who have decided to travel.

Social mobility also increases the risk of new, more contagious variants of the virus, such as those that have already emerged in the UK, South Africa and Brazil itself.

“It’s not just a threat to Brazil, it’s a threat to the whole world,” said Nicolelis. The hospital collapse puts Brazil “on the brink of funeral collapse,” he warned. “In cities like São Paulo and Porto Alegre (south), there are lines for burials, lines for death certificates and difficulties in obtaining coffins.

Early vaccination

Vaccination, meanwhile, is progressing slowly. So far, around 8% of the population has been vaccinated with the first dose and 2.3% are fully immunized with one of the two vaccines available in the country, the Chinese CoronaVac and the Swedish-British AstraZeneca.

And the economic crisis is added to the health crisis, with 14.2% unemployment. A third of the population managed to survive last year thanks to the subsidies, which were halted in January and will start again in April, with reduced values.

With information from AFP

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