Brazil, affected by Covid-19 variant, outpaces the US in daily cases and deaths

According to Oxford University’s Our World in Data, the seven-day average daily death toll in Brazil has risen to 1,573, while the number in the US is plummeting – to 1,566 a day – amid fewer cases and more vaccinations. The US peaked at just over 3,400 daily deaths in January.

As many countries have left the worst of the pandemic behind, Brazil is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises to date, with deaths and infections on the rise. In the past week, nearly 1,000 new cases were recorded every 20 minutes – more than 70,000 per day.

Public health experts have blamed some of the blame for the rapid spread of the P.1 strain from the Amazon city of Manaus, which studies have shown to be more contagious and more capable of re-infecting people than previous versions of the disease. Deaths have also risen as the Brazilian health system has struggled to cope, meaning patients who could have been rescued were left to die in chaotic hospital corridors or – in the worst case – suffocated from lack of oxygen.

Brazil is now home to hundreds of new Covid-19 variants, researchers said, who warned that other, more dangerous versions could emerge the longer the disease continues to propagate and mutate, threatening to undermine other countries’ progress against the pandemic .

“It seems like a nightmare,” said Mohamed Parrini, CEO of Moinhos de Vento hospital in the southern city of Porto Alegre, who has worked hard to convert other wards into makeshift ICUs. “The saddest part is when you start to see the people around you being intubated too – people’s husbands, employees’ husbands and uncles.”

Like many doctors across the country, Mr. Parrini said he saw more younger patients – many in their 30s and 40s – than during the first wave of cases in Brazil in the middle of last year. Researchers are still trying to understand why.

Covid-19 has killed more than 260,000 people in Brazil, including more than 10,000 in the past week. That puts the country behind the US, which has more than 525,000 dead.

Public health specialists have also blamed President Jair Bolsonaro for not getting more vaccines and reducing the danger of the disease. The former army captain recently told Brazilians to go back to work and “stop whining”.

Brazil has only vaccinated about 4% of its population. That means the number of cases and deaths in Brazil is likely to remain higher in the coming months, epidemiologists say.

The US, Brazil and India led in the total daily deaths for each month of the pandemic, but the first few, when the virus began its deadly march from China to South Korea and Europe.

Public hospitals in the capital Brasília and in more than 20 of Brazil’s 26 states have now reached full capacity or are running low on beds in their ICU units. Hospitals in Brasília, the Amazon and the South have resorted to renting refrigerated shipping containers to store corpses after their on-site morgues were full. Meanwhile, cemeteries in some cities, such as Campo Grande in the Midwest, have excavated their parking lots to make more room for graves.

As a percentage of the population of 213 million people, Brazil has so far seen fewer deaths than the US, as has Mexico, Peru and several European countries. But the speed of Brazil’s recent spate of fatalities – and the fact that it runs counter to the global trend – has raised significant concern about the country’s fate and the potential of the P.1 species to produce similar wreak havoc across the region.

A recent study found that P.1 is 1.4 to 2.2 times more contagious than versions of the virus previously found in Brazil, and 25% to 61% more capable of re-infecting humans.

Researchers believe that P.1 first emerged in Manaus in early November, and by January the new strain was already responsible for 85% of new Covid-19 infections in the city.

Chaos soon followed. After dozens of patients in Manaus were suffocated in January due to a city-wide oxygen shortage, a convoy of trucks from Venezuela made the 26-hour journey south through the rainforest to deliver supplies. Prosecutors also investigated reports last month that intubated patients in the region were tied to their beds after a sedative deficiency.

While the contamination rate and daily death toll have shown signs of a decline in Amazonas state in recent weeks, other states further south are facing their darkest days yet as P.1 continues to spread. São Paulo, Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city, has called on volunteer doctors to help relieve exhausted medical staff as the ICU’s occupancy rate reaches 80% for the first time.

Brazil began its vaccination campaign on January 17, but has been slow. There are mixed signals as to how Brazil’s leading vaccine, the Chinese CoronaVac Injection, and other Covid-19 vaccines against P.1 will work. The Butantan Institute and Fiocruz, Brazilian research centers producing the CoronaVac vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca injection, respectively, said studies show that both are effective against P.1.

A lab study this week showed that Pfizer Inc.’s

vaccine was able to neutralize P.1. However, another small study this month showed that plasma from people vaccinated with CoronaVac five months ago “did not neutralize the strain efficiently.”

Write to Samantha Pearson at [email protected] and Luciana Magalhaes at [email protected]