Covid in Brazil ‘completely out of control’, says Sao Paulo-based journalist

Brazil has just reached a grim Covid-19 milestone, and a Sao Paulo-based journalist does not see the situation improving in the near future.

“We have people dying from lack of oxygen, people are literally suffocating,” Folha de Sao Paulo reporter Patricia Campos Mello said Tuesday on CNBC “The News with Shepard Smith”. “There are no drugs for intubation, there are no intensive care beds. It is a combination of lack of planning and simply denial of the severity of the disease.”

“The situation is completely out of control,” Campos Mello added.

Campos Mello’s comments came after Brazil recorded a record daily Covid death tally on Tuesday, registering more than 3,700 deaths, according to data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Brazil has the second highest number of Covid deaths in the world, behind the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University. In addition, less than 2% of the Brazilian population has received at least one dose of the vaccine.

However, President Jair Bolsonaro has constantly attacked security measures related to Covid. Earlier this month, he told people to stop “complaining” about the deaths and just move on. Campos Mello noted that the world can learn from Brazil’s mistakes.

“I think the main lesson is that when you have a president or an executive spreading misinformation and saying that people shouldn’t worry, that they don’t have to do social distancing, it ‘is very, very serious, and we’re seeing results now with all the deaths, ”Campos Mello said.

Bolsonaro also replaced several of his senior military officials on Tuesday, after sacking a defense minister on Monday as part of a major cabinet reshuffle. Campos Mello told CNBC’s Shepard Smith that the political chaos was the result of Bolsonaro’s reaction to widespread pressure due to the country’s mismanagement of the pandemic.

“President Bolsonaro’s approval ratings are dropping, so he fired some ministers, and today the heads of the armed forces, they have resigned because they were pressured by Bolsonaro to have some sort of curfews or extreme measures that were almost exaggerated, ”she told me.