“If possible, (the women should) postpone pregnancy a little bit until a better time so (they) can have a more peaceful pregnancy,” said Raphael Camara, the minister of primary health care at Brazil’s Ministry of Health. “Of course we can’t say this to those who are 42, 43 years old, but for a young woman who can, it’s best to wait,” he said at a news conference.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Brazil ranks second to the US in terms of Covid-19 deaths, with 368,749 deaths and more than 13.8 million cases. Cities across the country have been hit hard by a recent surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths, fueled in part by new variants believed to be extra contagious and some Brazilians’ disdain for social precautions. distance.
“In Brazil, the federal response was a dangerous combination of passivity and misconduct, including the promotion of chloroquine as a treatment despite a lack of evidence,” said a team led by Marcia Castro of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, experts at the University of São Paulo and elsewhere wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
Researchers argued that “quick and fair” responses from the federal government could have helped contain the outbreak and protect the most vulnerable – but the leaders have failed and are still failing.
In the city of Manaus, a spike in severe cases led to hospital systems collapsing, short of oxygen for patients.
“Without immediate action, this could be a preview of what remains to be done in other places in Brazil,” the team warned. Unless the government took immediate action, implemented epidemiological and genomic surveillance measures and stepped up vaccinations, the spread of variants is likely to result in “unimaginable loss of life”.
Camara said Friday that the ministry is investigating the issue of pregnancy and variants.
“We don’t have a national or international study, but the clinical view of experts shows that the new variant is more aggressive in pregnant women,” he said. “Before, [severity] was linked to the end of pregnancy, but now (they) are seeing a more serious evolution in the second trimester and even in the first trimester, ”he added.