Coronavirus surge is spurring desperate calls for strict lockdown measures, however President Bolsonaro still rejects curbs.
For the first time considering that the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil has taped more than 4,000 coronavirus deaths in a single day, a new grim milestone for the country as President Jair Bolsonaro continues to decline public health constraints.
The Brazilian health ministry said on Tuesday that 4,195 people had died due to the infection.
The country has now recorded more than 366,000 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally– 2nd just to the United States.
” It’s an atomic power plant that has triggered a chain reaction and runs out control. It’s a biological Fukushima,” Dr Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian medic and teacher at Duke University, told the Reuters news agency.
Brazilian medical facilities throughout the country are being stretched to their limits as the rate of infections continues to climb up. Younger individuals are falling ill and requiring treatment as this wave of the pandemic has been marked by more quickly transmissible pressures of the infection.
Public health experts, medical professionals and even some regional leaders are significantly speaking out about the requirement to institute rigorous lockdowns to try to stem the surge.
” We remain in a terrible scenario, and we’re not seeing effective measures by either state or federal governments” to react, epidemiologist Ethel Maciel of Espirito Santo Federal University told the AFP news firm.
While less than 10 percent of Brazilians have actually gotten a first dose of COVID-19 vaccines up until now, Maciel said “the only method to slow the exceptionally fast spread of the virus is an effective lockdown for a minimum of 20 days”.
Meanwhile, Brazil’s far-right populist president still shuns public health limitations such as mask-wearing and lockdowns, even in the middle of mounting pressure on his government to represent the coronavirus crisis crippling the nation.
Bolsonaro last month swore in a new health minister– his fourth since the pandemic began– and carried out a government reshuffle that saw him change his foreign affairs, justice and defence ministers. He later also named new heads of the country’s army, navy and air force
Bolsonaro has said the economic implications of coronavirus lockdowns are worse than the virus.
On Tuesday, Brazil’s economy minister said the government thinks “Brazil might be back to service” in two to three months.
” Naturally, most likely economic activity will take a drop but it will be much, much less than the drop we suffered last year … and much, much shorter,” Paulo Guedes said during an online occasion.
However epidemiologists and other professionals have put forward a lot more sombre predictions.
The University of Washington just recently approximated that coronavirus-related deaths might amount to 100,000 in April alone, while the country’s total death toll could reach almost 563,000 by July.
” If something isn’t done to avoid this disaster we will certainly strike this prediction,” Dr Jamal Suleiman, a specialist in transmittable diseases at Sao Paulo’s Emilio Ribas health center, told Al Jazeera
Source
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Al Jazeera and news firms
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