Sao Paulo | Brazil broke its daily record for COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, with 1972 deaths officially reported, with no sign of the epidemic slowing down in a country where the hospital system is overcrowded and vaccination is slowly progressing.
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Since the start of the health crisis a year ago, 268,370 deaths from COVID-19 have been recorded in Brazil, and only the United States has surpassed it.
The Ministry of Health also reported 70,764 new cases, for a total of 11.1 million people.
The previous record death toll was set on March 3, with 1,910 deaths in 24 hours. Over the past seven days, it averaged 1,573 deaths per day, a number that has steadily risen over the past two weeks.
The country, with a population of 212 million, is in a dire state. According to a report released Tuesday by the Fiucruz Foundation, which reports to the Ministry of Health, intensive care units are occupied by more than 80% in 25 of Brazil’s 27 state capitals.
“The battle against Covid-19 was lost in 2020, and there is not the slightest chance to reverse this tragic scenario in the first half of 2021,” Fukruz epidemiologist Jes جيem Orellana told AFP. Amazon.
The best we can do is hope for a miracle of mass vaccination or a radical change in the handling of the epidemic. Today, Brazil is a threat to humanity and an open-air laboratory, where impunity in the administration appears to be the rule. “
In early March, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the country to take “drastic” measures against the epidemic.
“If Brazil does not take it seriously, it will affect all of its neighbors and outside. So it’s not just about Brazil, and I think it’s about all of Latin America.
On the other hand, vaccination progresses slowly. About 8.6 million people (4.1% of the population) received the first dose of the vaccine and 2.9 million received a second dose.
The vaccines used are CoronaVac, from the Chinese Sinovac laboratory, and the Swedish-British vaccine from AstraZeneca-Oxford.
The Ministry of Health said that it is negotiating with other laboratories, and acknowledges that “the national vaccination campaign may stop due to a lack of doses,” according to a letter to the Chinese ambassador published on Tuesday by the G1 information portal.
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