The catastrophic Brazilian response to covid-19 may amount to a crime against humanity [View all]
April 5, 2021
In Brazil, the federal government’s approach to the covid-19 pandemic has been to try to achieve herd immunity through contagion. This has so far led to the avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of citizens. On 5 March, we published an article explaining the strategy to allow covid-19 to spread, led by Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president himself. [1] Since then, as expected, Brazil has plunged into an unprecedented health catastrophe.
Last week, nearly one third of all daily covid-19 fatalities in the world were in Brazil, although Brazil makes up only 2.7% of the world population. On 2 April, there were 12.8 million cases and over 325 thousand deaths. In the week 21-27 March, there was a daily 0.8% rise in cases and 1.9% rise in deaths; lethality has risen from 2% to 3.3% since late 2020. [2] The new variants circulating in Brazil have become a serious cause of concern to neighbouring countries. [3]
The catastrophe could be much worse had there not been a national public health system (SUS) in place, based on universal coverage. Yet the system has reached the point of collapse.
On 29 March 2021, 17 out of the 27 federal states reached adult-ICU-bed occupation rates of 90% or more; among the 27 capital cities, 21 displayed the same rates, and seven of them had reached their full capacity or were working above it. [4] At most points of care, the number of available beds, although insufficient, results from successive expansions due to the high demand. Despite these efforts, by 25 March, 6,371 people were waiting for an ICU-bed. [5] In March, 496 people lost their lives while on the waiting list for ICU in the state of Sao Paulo alone. [6]
More:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/04/05/the-catastrophic-brazilian-response-to-covid-19-may-amount-to-a-crime-against-humanity/
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