Amid death toll and infections from COVID-19, Bolsonaro rejected movement restrictions and called on people to return to work

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday criticized measures aimed at restricting population movements in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and he assured that “hunger kills much more than the virus itself”.

Bolsonaro expressed his point of view in an appearance to reporters, without accepting questions, as the country on Tuesday recorded a new daily record for the number of deaths from covid-19 of 3,780.

“Brazil must return to work. People must return to workr, ”said Bolsonaro, who appeared in front of the maskless microphones, accompanied by other senior officials who had their faces partially covered.

“The collateral effects of the pandemic can not be more than those of the virus itself,” Bolsonaro insisted.

Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are in a festive period ordered by the municipal authorities which began on Friday and will last until this Sunday, in order to restrict the activities of the population in the face of the pandemic.

From March 1 to March 31, there were 66,573 deaths from covid, more than double the 32,881 in July 2020, so far the deadliest month.

In the last 24 hours, 90,638 new cases of infection, according to the report released by the National Council of Secretaries of Health of Brazil (Conass) on Wednesday afternoon.

Brazil is the second country with the highest cumulative number of covid-19 cases after the United States, with 12.6 million infected and 321,515 deaths, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Bolsonaro said orders from state and municipal authorities seeking to ask people to stay in their homes “extrapolate a state of siege.”, a special measure that can only be authorized by the legislator.

“Stay at home, we are not going to solve this problem”, underlined Bolsonaro, a head of state who at the start of the pandemic minimized it and came to qualify the covid-19 of “gripita”.

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

“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).

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.

With information from EFE and AFP

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