{"id":44863,"date":"2021-03-11T15:22:36","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T15:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=44863"},"modified":"2021-03-11T15:22:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T15:22:36","slug":"brazils-hospitals-buckle-in-absence-of-national-virus-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=44863","title":{"rendered":"Brazil\u2019s hospitals buckle in absence of national virus plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Brazil\u2019s hospitals are faltering as a highly contagious coronavirus variant tears<\/a> through the country and the only attempt to create a national plan to contain COVID-19 has fallen short.<\/p>\n

For the last week, Brazilian governors sought to do something President Jair Bolsonaro obstinately rejects: cobble together a proposal for states to help curb the nation\u2019s deadliest<\/a> COVID-19 outbreak yet. The effort was expected to include a curfew, prohibition of crowded events and limits on the hours non-essential services can operate.<\/p>\n

The final product, presented on Wednesday, was a one-page document that included general support for restricting activity but without any specific measures. Six governors, evidently still wary of antagonising Bolsonaro, declined to sign on.<\/p>\n

Piaui state\u2019s Governor Wellington Dias told The Associated Press news agency that, unless pressure on hospitals is eased, growing numbers of patients will have to endure the disease without a hospital bed or any hope of treatment in an intensive care unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have reached the limit across Brazil; rare are the exceptions,\u201d Dias, who leads the governors\u2019 forum, said. \u201cThe chance of dying without assistance is real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Relatives of Luiz Alves, 63, a COVID-19 victim, embrace as they watch staff seal his final resting place at Inhauma cemetery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [File: Pilar Olivares\/Reuters]<\/figure>\n

Those deaths have already started. In Brazil\u2019s wealthiest state, Sao Paulo, at least 30 patients died this month while waiting for ICU beds, according to a tally published on Wednesday by the news site G1. In southern Santa Catarina state, 419 people are waiting for transfer to ICU beds. In the neighbouring Rio Grande do Sul, the ICU capacity is at 106 percent.<\/p>\n

\u2018More rigid measures\u2019 needed<\/h2>\n

Alexandre Zavascki, a doctor in Rio Grande do Sul\u2019s capital Porto Alegre, described a constant arrival of hospital patients who struggle to breathe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of colleagues who, at times, stop to cry. This isn\u2019t medicine we\u2019re used to performing routinely. This is medicine adapted for a war scenario,\u201d said Zavascki, who oversees infectious disease treatment at a private hospital. \u201cWe see a good part of the population refusing to see what\u2019s happening, resisting the facts. Those people could be next to step inside the hospital and will want beds. But there won\u2019t be one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The country, he added, needs \u201cmore rigid measures\u201d from local authorities.<\/p>\n

Over the president\u2019s objections, the Supreme Court last year upheld cities\u2019 and states\u2019 jurisdiction to impose restrictions on activity. Even so, Bolsonaro consistently condemned their moves, saying the economy needed to keep churning and that isolation would cause depression.<\/p>\n

Measures were relaxed towards the end of 2020, as COVID-19 cases and deaths ebbed, municipal election campaigns kicked off and home-bound Brazilians grew fatigued by quarantine.<\/p>\n

The most recent surge is driven by the P1 variant, which Brazil\u2019s health minister said last month is three times as transmissible as the original strain. It first became dominant in the Amazonian city Manaus and in January forced the airlift of hundreds of patients to other states.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s failure to arrest the virus\u2019s spread since then is increasingly seen as a concern not just for Latin American neighbours, but also as a warning to the world, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said in a March 5 press briefing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the whole country, aggressive use of the public health measures, social measures, will be very, very crucial,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout doing things to impact transmission or suppress the virus, I don\u2019t think we will be able in Brazil to have the declining trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s tally of more than 10,000 deaths was Brazil\u2019s highest since the pandemic began, and this week\u2019s toll is on track to be higher after the country posted nearly 2,300 deaths on Wednesday \u2014 blowing away the prior day\u2019s total that was also a record.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernors, like a lot of the population, are getting fed up with all this inaction,\u201d said Margareth Dalcolmo, a prominent pulmonologist at the state-run Fiocruz Institute. She added that their proposed pact is vague and will remain symbolic unless it becomes far-reaching and confronts the federal government.<\/p>\n

No national curfew<\/h2>\n

Brazil\u2019s national council of state health secretaries last week called for the establishment of a national curfew and lockdown in regions that are approaching maximum hospital capacity. Bolsonaro again demurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t decree it,\u201d Bolsonaro said on Monday at an event. \u201cAnd you can be sure of one thing: my army will not go to the street to oblige the people to stay home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restrictions can already be found just outside the presidential palace after the federal district\u2019s governor, Ibaneis Rocha, imposed a curfew and partial lockdown. Rocha warned on Tuesday that he could clamp down harder, sparing only pharmacies and hospitals if people keep disregarding rules. Currently, 213 people in the district are on the waitlist for an ICU bed.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro told reporters on Monday that the curfew is \u201can affront, inadmissible\u201d, and said even the WHO believes lockdowns are inadequate because they disproportionately hurt the poor. While the WHO acknowledges \u201cprofound negative effects\u201d, it says some countries have had no choice but to impose heavy-handed measures to slow transmission, and that governments must make the most of the extra time provided to test and trace cases while caring for patients.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s President Jair Bolsonaro has resisted calls for a national curfew to stem the coronavirus [File: Ueslei Marcelino\/Reuters]<\/figure>\n

Such nuance was lost on Bolsonaro. His government continues its search for silver-bullet solutions that so far has served only to stoke false hopes. Any idea appears to warrant consideration, except the ones from public health experts.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro\u2019s government spent millions producing and distributing malaria pills, which have shown no benefit in rigorous studies. Still, Bolsonaro endorsed the drugs. He has also supported treatment with two drugs for fighting parasites, neither of which has shown effectiveness. He again touted their capacity to prevent hospitalisations during a Wednesday event at the presidential palace.<\/p>\n

Bolsonaro also dispatched a committee to Israel this week to assess an unproven nasal spray that he has called \u201ca miraculous product\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fiocruz\u2019s Dalcolmo, whose younger sister is currently in an ICU, called the trip \u201creally pathetic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Camila Romano, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo\u2019s Institute of Tropical Medicine, hopes a test her lab developed to identify worrisome variants, including P1, will help monitor and control their spread. She also wants to see stricter government measures, and citizens doing their part.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day is a new surprise, a new variant, a city whose health system enters collapse,\u201d Romano said. \u201cWe\u2019re now in the worst phase. Whether this will be the worst phase of all, unfortunately, we don\u2019t know what\u2019s yet to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazil\u2019s hospitals are faltering as a highly contagious coronavirus variant tears through the country and the only attempt to create a national plan to contain COVID-19 has fallen short. For the last week, Brazilian governors sought to do something President Jair Bolsonaro obstinately rejects: cobble together a proposal for states to help curb the nation\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}