Rio de Janeiro, Nov 21 (EFE).- Brazil could have avoided the deaths of some 47,000 elderly people, as well as the hospitalization of another 104,000, if it had brought forward or stepped up its vaccination campaign against covid, according to a study published this Monday .
The Latin American giant, one of the two countries most affected by the pandemic in the world, with almost 689,000 deaths and more than 35 million infections, only started its immunization campaign against the coronavirus on January 17, 2021, almost a month after the application of the first vaccine in the world.
The study by various Brazilian scientists led by the Oswaldo Cruz State Foundation (Fiocruz) concluded that the death of the elderly caused by covid could have been between 40% and 50% lower than that recorded between January and August 2021 if the immunization campaign had they started earlier or at a faster pace.
Analysis of data from the first eight months of vaccination led to the conclusion that immunization saved between 54,000 and 63,000 lives of people over the age of 60 and prevented hospitalization between 158,000 and 178,000 elderly people.
But as many as 110,000 elderly lives could have been saved, concluded the study, the results of which were highlighted in an article published today in the latest issue of the scientific journal “The Lancet Regional Health Americas”.
According to the researchers, although Brazil started the campaign shortly after other countries, it had few vaccines at the start of the campaign and this prevented immunization from being faster.
Brazil, with 115 million inhabitants, started the campaign with a few doses and only in March reached an average of 250,000 vaccines per day, which slowly increased to reach 500,000 per day in May and one million per day in July .
The delayed start of the vaccination and the few initial doses were attributed to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, leader of the Brazilian extreme right-wing denial and who believed that the pandemic was not serious and that vaccination was neither effective nor safe.
The Army Reserve captain has gone so far as to reject offers to buy vaccines that Brazil has received in 2020.
His denial and questioning of the handling of covid were exploited by rivals in October’s presidential election, in which Bolsonaro ended up defeated in the second round by progressive leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“If we had vaccinated in January at the same rate as in March, we would have avoided 47,000 deaths,” said Leonardo Souto Ferreira, a researcher at Paulista State University (Unesp) and one of those responsible for the report.
The study also concluded that, with 178,000 fewer hospitalizations over the period, Brazil would have avoided nearly $2 billion in public health spending.
In addition to Fiocruz and Unesp, researchers from the University of Campinas, the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Covid-19 Observatory network participated in the study. EFE extension
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