For months, the Paraguayan doctor Leticia Pintos has been warning about the coronavirus and the second wave of the pandemic through drastic videos. Now, exactly what I was trying to avoid has happened: all the intensive care beds in the public health system in this South American country have been occupied since Thursday.
“We have reached the limit of our capacities, tonight they have occupied 100% of our beds,” said the director of Intensive Medicine of the Ministry of Health. The government tries hard to provide support, but it doesn’t go much. They announced 42 additional beds, but 30 of them were already taken by Friday.
In Brazil, private clinics are also collapsed
In neighboring Brazil, the health system is also collapsing as a result of the second wave of COVID-19. In the megalopolis of Sao Paulo for days there are no more places in public hospitals. Patients are seen in the hallways. For the first time since the pandemic began, private hospitals have also taken over. According to Fohla and O’Globo, the private hospitals in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte have also declared that they have reached maximum occupancy. This would mean that, unlike in the second wave, this time the pandemic would also be taking a heavy toll on the middle and upper classes.
The Osvaldo Cruz Foundation, the largest health research institute in South America, warns that the situation is critical in practically all Brazilian states. “It is the worst health collapse in the history of Brazil,” Fiocruz stressed last week. Given the overload throughout the country, it is no longer possible to send health personnel from the least affected regions to the crisis areas. The highest health surveillance authority, Anvisa, said that with the new record of weekly infections and daily deaths, medicines and oxygen are scarce, so it eliminated bureaucratic obstacles for their importation and distribution.
Accelerate the rate of vaccination for variants
The Ministry of Health plans to authorize the use of the doses reserved for the second inoculation as the first dose to accelerate the rate of vaccination, according to information from O’Globo. Furthermore, it has been stipulated that oxygen cylinders originally intended for industrial use may only be used for medical purposes.
Health experts suspect that the P.1 variant, first identified in the Amazon region and later spread through the city of Manaus, is behind the explosive development of this wave. The former Argentine Minister of Health Ginés González warned weeks ago of a catastrophe “if we do not manage to change the behavior of society.” In South America, the summer holidays have just ended, in which many took the opportunity to visit relatives and enjoy the beach.
Politicians under pressure
Meanwhile, the pressure on politicians grows. The acting governor of Rio de Janeiro imposed a ten-day quarantine on Friday: beaches, parks, museums and other leisure-time facilities have had to close. Ultra-conservative President Jair Bolsonaro continues to downplay the virus and oppose lockdowns for economic reasons. Many of his supporters follow his example. A few days ago, the president said: “This is turning into a war against the presidents. It seems as if people already only die of COVID.” As always, he spoke without a mask, surrounded by enthusiastic supporters in the presidential palace.
The management of the pandemic has also antagonized the president with the country’s economic elites. On Monday, 500 business leaders, former ministers and former Central Bank presidents wrote a letter urging him to do something urgently.
Support for Bolsonaro has dropped to 30%, while 44% of those surveyed consider his government to be bad or miserable, according to a survey by the Datafohla Institute. A week ago, the president changed his Health Minister again: Marcelo Quiroga is already the fourth to hold this portfolio since the pandemic began.
Chile, the exemplary student, is also beaten
For two weeks now, demonstrations against the government have been calling in Paraguay. The Ministry of Health made the advance payment of the vaccines through the Covax mechanism of the World Health Organization to an erroneous account, so for now it has been possible to immunize a small group with the doses that have arrived from the vaccine Russian, Sputnik V. The mistake cost the Health Minister his job, but the opposition did not succeed in removing Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez in Parliament.
Even in Chile, one of the countries with the best vaccination rates in the world, infections have increased enormously. Nearly 4,000 infections were recorded over the weekend. In the southern region of Biobío, some patients had to wait up to 24 hours in the corridor to be treated in an emergency.
94.8% of intensive care beds in the country are occupied, according to a report from the Pontifical Catholic University and the University of Concepción. Chilean Health Minister Enrique Paris said that only 70% of beds are occupied with COVID-19 patients; the rest would be related to surgical interventions, such as tumor operations, which have accumulated since the beginning of the pandemic.
The authorities have imposed a quarantine in the worst hit regions and are considering increasing the health personnel. Five million people (of its 18.7 million inhabitants) have already been vaccinated in Chile.
(eal/ers)
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