Brazil broke its daily record for Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, March 9, with 1,972 officially reported deaths, with no sign of the pandemic slowing down in a country where the hospital system is overwhelmed and vaccination is progressing slowly.
The health ministry also reported 70,764 new cases, making a total of 11.1 million people.
Read also: Brazil: Lula ready to challenge Bolsonaro in 2022
The previous death record was set on March 3 with 1,910 dead in 24 hours.
Over the past seven days, the average is 1,573 deaths per day, a figure that has been rising steadily over the past two weeks.
Since the start of the health crisis a year ago, 268,370 deaths due to Covid-19 have been recorded in Brazil, exceeded only by the United States.
Today, Brazil is a threat to humanity and an open-air laboratory, where impunity in management seems to be the rule.
"
Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist from Fiocruz / Amazon
The country, which has 212 million inhabitants, is experiencing a dramatic situation.
According to a report released Tuesday by the Fiocruz Foundation, which reports to the Ministry of Health, intensive care units are more than 80% occupied in 25 of Brazil's 27 state capitals.
"The fight against covid-19 was lost in 2020 and there is not the slightest chance of reversing this tragic scenario in the first half of 2021,"
said Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist from Fiocruz / Amazon.
“The best we can do is hope for the miracle of mass vaccination or for a radical change in the handling of the pandemic.
Today, Brazil is a threat to humanity and an open-air laboratory, where impunity in management seems to be the rule, ”
he added.
Read also: Covid-19: Brazil overwhelmed by the Amazon variant
In early March, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had urged the country to adopt
“aggressive”
measures
against the pandemic.
“If Brazil doesn't take it seriously, it will affect all of its neighbors and beyond.
So it's not just Brazil, I think it concerns all of Latin America, ”
he said.
Vaccination, on the other hand, is progressing slowly.
8.6 million people (4.1% of the population) received a first dose of the vaccine, 2.9 million received the second dose.
The vaccines used are CoronaVac, from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, and the Swedish-British vaccine from Astrazeneca / Oxford.
The Ministry of Health says it is in negotiations with other laboratories and recognizes that
"the national vaccination campaign may be interrupted for lack of doses"
, according to a letter to the Chinese ambassador published Tuesday by the information portal G1.
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