“Administrative incompetence has ruined our chance of having a reaction to COVID,” said Miguel Lago, executive director of the Brazilian Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public fitness officials.
Brazil faces the pandemic with an interim fitness minister, Eduardo Pazuello, an army general who has made his career in logistics. Two fitness premieres, whether doctors, emerged from their differences with Bolsonaro on social distance measures and the use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by the president but which maximum studies have discovered as effective against COVID-19, or even dangerous.
Bolsonaro, who COVID-19 is a “small flu,” says he has recovered from his own infection with the drug.
Many of Brazil’s 27 states have begun reopening retail stores and restaurants, but responses have deferred, as has the strain on the fitness care system. While Brasilia, the capital, has recorded almost 80% occupancy of its large care beds, Rio de Janeiro’s occupancy rate has now fallen to less than 30% in personal hospitals.
In Rio, grocery stores and restaurants have already been opened and others have returned to the beaches.
“The scenario is very padded and we don’t see why this is happening. Perhaps the contagion rate is much higher than reported at the start of the pandemic and that many other people on the street were immune,” said Graccho Alvim, director of the State Hospital Association.
Viviane Melo da Silva, 47, lost her mother, Esther Melo da Silva, in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, on April 9. The mother reported having had a bleeding and a few days later began to have breathing problems. He died after five days in a public hospital.
“I still don’t settle for his death, not yet,” Da Silva said, weeping and expressing remorse that the family circle simply doesn’t hold the vigil for his mother.
“The government said it was a “little flu.” He didn’t care. That didn’t worry him and that’s what happened: other guiltless people died because of the government’s neglect and lack of preparation,” he added.
Nazare Rosa de Paula, 67, said many others were still oblivious to the virus despite so many deaths. She said her husband Geraldo, a 70-year-old retired bus driver, would wear a mask to move to the supermarket in Rio de Janeiro, but never thought he would get infected.
In April, he contracted what gave the impression of being a flu. After his fitness deteriorated for 8 days, he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and died on April 28.
“It’s fast. There’s no time to do anything and it surprised a lot of people,” de Paula said.
They’ve been in combination for 43 years. “All that’s left is the feeling of lacking it. People said that over time (it will get better), but for me, it probably won’t stop, it probably won’t stop.”