Brazil broke daily coronavirus death record for seventh consecutive day

Brazil, one of the global epicenters of the pandemic, added on Friday 1,760 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the second worst mark since the start of the crisis. He broke the daily death record for the seventh day in a row. The figure confirms the sharp resurgence of the disease in a country on the verge of collapse over much of the territory.

Brazil recorded its deadliest week since the start of the health crisis. In the last four days, the number of deaths associated with COVID-19 has not fallen below 1600: Tuesday, 1641 lives were lost, Wednesday 1910-all-time high, Thursday 1699 and this Friday 1760 others.

According to the report published this Friday by the Ministry of Health, the total number of deaths from the coronavirus stands at 262,770 since March 12, when the first death from the disease was recorded in the country.

The government said the Latin American giant represented 75,495 cases in the last 24 hours, so that the accumulated infections have reached the 10,869,227.

The average number of infections in the last 14 days is 56000 per day, while that of the dead reaches 1,200 every day during the same period.

The figures confirm that Brazil, with its 212 million inhabitants, second country in the world with the highest number of deaths, only behind the United States, and third in cases, behind the North American nation and India.

According to the balance, 9.6 million people have already recovered from the disease in Brazil, while 935,047 are still under medical supervision.

Saint Paul announced a “war operation”

São Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil and the one with the highest number of deaths and cases of COVID-19, announced on Friday a “war operation“Welcome patients with the virus to their hospitals, which are on the verge of collapse.

San Pablo’s health secretary, Jean Gorinchteyn, indicated that as part of the operation a new field hospital will be built to treat COVID-19 patients, after all those built in the first wave have been deactivated.

Volunteers will also be called upon to act on the front lines to fight the virus.

“We will continue to open beds in hospitals. We will open anywhere in these hospitals: whether it is in the amphitheatres, whether it is in the ambulatory, whether it is in the corridors. There will be patients in the hallways, what we don’t want are neglected patients, ”he said.

São Paulo, the wealthiest region in the country, this week had the record for intensive care unit (ICU) admissions since the start of the pandemic and the highest number of patients admitted with suspected coronavirus.

More dangerous variants of the coronavirus are advancing strongly across Brazil

New variants of the coronavirus considered to be more transmissible and dangerous are advancing through Brazil and are already predominant in at least a quarter of the country, which is facing the worst phase of the pandemic.

Refrigerated containers to store bodies, ambulances transformed into makeshift hospital rooms, transfer of patients thousands of kilometers away … Signs of an impending health collapse are increasingly visible in Brazil.

The exhaustion of part of society after a year of restrictions, the denial of President Jair Bolsonaro and the lack of measures at the national level, also make Brazil a huge “barn“For the appearance of new variants, according to specialists consulted by Efe.

“Brazil is becoming the largest open-air coronavirus laboratory, a large number of mutations can occur“And as a result of that,”more infectious and fatal variants”, Alerted this Friday the famous Brazilian scientist Miguel Nicolelis, professor at Duke University in the United States.

Behind this “ tsunami ” of infections which has continued to grow since November, there are several factors, but the one that worries scientists the most is the rampant circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants with mutations associated with a greater power of infection.

In at least seven of the 27 Brazilian states, the majority of cases are already detected with the so-called “variants of concern”. These are Amazonas, Ceará, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, according to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), a leading medical research center in Latin America.

In all, the hospitals are at the limit, especially in the last three, which make up the southern region of the country. And that’s just the beginning. “The effect of the variations will start to be felt now»Nicolelis alerted.

Fiocruz has identified the mutation shared by variants from the UK, South Africa and Brazil in more than half of the infections in these states.

The Brazilian, known as P.1 and from Amazonas, is already present in almost the entire national territory.

“The film repeats itself. Amazon was the first, but the others follow behind. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if P.1 were primarily responsible for what is happening in the south, “he said. Efe Felipe Naveca, virologist at the Leônidas & María Deane Institute (Fiocruz Amazonia).

On the flip side, there are growing indications that the Brazilian variant is able to evade antibodies generated by a person who previously passed covid-19.

And the higher the number of cases, the greater the likelihood of the appearance of new lines. In fact, Fiocruz has increased its genetic sequencing capacity across the country in order to find out “if P.1 itself is also evolving”.

“As long as we have this environment with millions of cases per day, there is the possibility that another variant will emerge and I don’t know if it will be worse than P.1. We have to cut the transmission so that there is no chance that something worse will emerge, ”Naveca insisted.

(With information from EFE)

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