IThis is because of the ban on flights between France and Brazil. It is especially wreaking havoc in this South American country, the scene of the uncontrolled spread of the Covid-19 epidemic. In recent days, the P1 variant of the coronavirus has been of great concern. More contagious, resistant to vaccines, it has, moreover, already killed 80 pregnant women in Brazil since the beginning of the year. So much so that the authorities now advise couples who wish to have a child to postpone their project, reports RFI.
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It was the secretary of the Ministry of Health, Raphael Camara, who suggested, Friday, April 16 during a press conference, to all Brazilians to wait “for a better time”, namely after the peak of the epidemic, to be able to “live [leur] pregnancy in better conditions ”.Serious forms developed during the first months of pregnancy
If there is still no “national or international study” on this subject, the politician was concerned about the fact that “the clinical experience of specialists shows that this variant acts aggressively in pregnant women”. Quoted by RFI, Raphael Camara assured that women have already contracted serious forms of Covid-19 during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. The secretary of the Brazilian Ministry of Health felt that it would therefore be wise to proceed as during the Zika epidemic in 2016, a virus that causes severe malformations in the fetus. At the time, “we saw a decrease in pregnancies in Brazil, and then it increased”, he recalled.
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The politician, on the other hand, qualified his remarks, believing that it was impossible to ask for such a sacrifice from a woman “over 42 or 43 years old”, specifies international radio. “But in the case of a young woman, who can more easily choose the time of her pregnancy, it is preferable until the situation returns to normal”, he concluded.
If this P1 variant is actively circulating in Brazil, a country with 372,000 deaths from the coronavirus, it is also present in France, recalls France Inter. Indeed, the first case was detected in early February in the Var, in a woman returning from Manaus, in the northwest of the South American country. Since then, however, it has remained an extremely minority, since it represents only 0.5% of new contaminations in France, according to Public Health France. The variant circulates, however, mainly in Guyana, neighboring Brazil, where it represents 76% of cases.
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