Brazil has more young patients than old patients in …

Number of coronavirus patients under 40 in intensive care surpassed older groups in Brazil last month, according to the Brazilian Association of Intensive Medicine (AMIB) and amid the growth of a new, more aggressive variant of the virus. Brazil has become the epicenter of the pandemic with the collapse of most of its states’ health systems. Despite the fact that scholars and governors are demanding restrictive measures from the federal government in an attempt to stop the contagion, President Jair Bolsonaro refuses, arguing that the economy cannot stop.

People aged 39 and under admitted to intensive care units for covid-19 dramatically increased in March to over 11,000, which means 52.2% of the total. The data comes from the UCI project, an initiative of AMIB. At the start of the pandemic, this figure was only 14.6% and between September and February 45%.

“Previously there was a population that normally only developed a milder form of the disease and did not need intensive care. So the increase … in this age group is very significant.”said Dr Ederlon Rezende, project coordinator.

Rezende said several factors could be behind the increase. Patients over 80 years of age, which fell from 13.6% to 7.8% of total intensive care in Brazil in March, are now mostly vaccinated. Young people are also more likely to be exposed to the virus, either because they have to leave their homes to work, or because they believe they are less vulnerable.

Another factor may be a variant of the virus originating in Manaus And that, according to experts, is partly responsible for the number of deaths from covid-19 in the country which exploded in March. The figures suggest that P1, which can re-infect people who had the original strain of the virus, “may also be more virulent,” Rezende said.

“Younger patients without pre-existing conditions also arrive in intensive care units with more severe cases.” of the disease, said the coordinator of a public hospital in São Paulo. Yes the proportion of patients connected to ventilators by the pandemic hit a record 58.1% in March, according to project data.

In parallel, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation warned that Brazil is going through a critical scenario and a worsening of the saturation of the health system, particularly in the southern and central states over the coming weeks. The coronavirus adds more than 13 million infections and has already killed 351,334 in this country of 212 million people, a death toll that is exceeded only by the United States.

Far from lowering the tone of his speech, the president Bolsonaro said on Saturday that the country lives a “dictatorship” because of the restrictions that some regions of the country have implemented to prevent contagion by covid-19 and He compared them to the “freedoms denied by the regime” of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The statements were made during a visit by the far-right leader to a favela in Brasilia.