Brazil registers 1,910 deaths in one day, the highest figure since the start of the pandemic

A suspected covid-19 patient arrives at a hospital in Brasilia this Wednesday.Eraldo Peres / AP

Brazil recorded 1,910 deaths from coronavirus this Wednesday, the highest number since the pandemic began.

The previous record was broken the day before.

As the world returns to normal, the most populous country in Latin America suffers its worst wave.

The ICUs of two thirds of the States are on the verge of collapse, the Amazonian strain wreaks havoc, some governors have imposed restrictions for a few days while the state secretaries of Health demand a national curfew and the president, Jair Bolsonaro, remains locked up : "As far as it depends on me, we are never going to have a

lockdown

(a total shutdown)."

The 1,910 deaths on Wednesday fell like a blow after the 1,641 on Tuesday and drove cacerolas in São Paulo against the president.

Brazil has been the second country in deaths for months after the United States and the third in infections (it adds 10.7 million among its more than 200 million inhabitants).

But while the curve falls outside its borders, here it rises strongly.

The average number of deaths has been over a thousand for more than 40 days.

The Brazilian management of the pandemic has been marked by politicization, chaos and Bolsonaro's determination - in line with former US President Donald Trump - to minimize the severity of the virus since the first cases, detected last year just after Of the carnival.

An academic study, first published by this newspaper, accuses Bolsonaro of leading "an institutional strategy to spread the virus."

Brazil accumulates 260,000 deaths and almost 11 million cases.

When dozens of patients hospitalized in Manaus died in mid-January due to lack of oxygen, the Brazilians thought that the situation could not get worse, but the rise in infections that existed then in several regions has been accentuated.

About twenty of the 26 states are now on the brink of collapse with ICUs above 80% occupancy.

Preliminary research suggests that the Manaus strain is much more contagious than the original and is capable of bypassing the immune system to attack people who have already been infected by other variants of COVID-19.

This Brazilian variant has become strong in the state of Amazonas, spread to almost the entire country and traveled abroad.

Hospital pressure is highest even in the city of São Paulo, the richest in the country, where traffic and crowds in the subway are almost at prendemic levels.

With a hospital admission every two minutes, its powerful public and private network is very overloaded, especially in the periphery.

The governor, João Doria, the great antagonist of Bolsonaro in this health crisis, has finally met the demands of his health advisers and has ordered the closure of all activities except the essential ones, but this time he has decided to keep the schools open, and the churches.

The city of Rio de Janeiro has imposed a night curfew.

And some other cities and states with overloaded hospitals have announced restrictions to curb infections.

In any case, the announced measures last between one and two weeks.

And they are much more timid than those claimed by the state secretaries of Health at the beginning of the week.

They ask in a joint letter "the immediate adoption of measures to avoid the imminent collapse of the public and private health networks."

The signatories, who include allies and opponents of the president, demand a curfew throughout the territory from eight in the afternoon to six in the morning including weekends, closing of beaches and bars, suspension of shows, religious and sports activities , and so on.

The neuroscientist Miguel Nicolis, who coordinated the advisory committee for the pandemic of the northeastern states until February, assures in an interview with this newspaper that at this point opening beds in ICUs is not enough, reports

Felipe Betim

.

Nicolis maintains that a three-week national confinement is essential.

“Everyone knows, and politicians too, that the growth rate of the virus is exponentially faster than the ability to create ICU beds, equip them and have staff to care for them.

There is no way to combat this by creating more hospital beds.

It's the typical makeup strategy, ”she says.

Vaccination has started, but the Bolsonaro government has not been able to secure enough doses for the process to advance at the speed that the seriousness of the situation requires.

3.4% of Brazilians have received the first dose compared to 15.8% of Americans.

During Trump's term, Brazil could always hide behind the fact that its data was less bad than that of the world's leading power.

The federal government is struggling for purchased injections to arrive and to close contracts that guarantee all the doses it needs to immunize a population of 210 million.

This Wednesday, the supplies needed to manufacture 14 million doses of the Coronavac vaccine at the Butantan Institute have arrived in São Paulo from China, according to Governor Doria.

Meanwhile, the Bolsonaro government manages the purchase of 100 million doses from Pfizer and another 38 million from Janssen.

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