RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil reported on Thursday 4,249 new deaths associated with covid-19, a new daily high since the beginning of the pandemic and the second time in a week that the country has had more than 4,000 deaths in a single day, official sources reported.
According to the Health Ministry bulletin, confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 13,279,857 after 86,652 people were reported infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the last 24 hours.
The country recorded 4,195 deaths on Tuesday, 3,829 on Wednesday, and 4,249 this Thursday, that is, 12,273 in just three days, almost the same number that, for example, accumulated Egypt (12,290) or Bolivia (12,366) in the entire pandemic, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
With an average of 2,800 deaths per day in the last week, the Latin American giant is today the place on the planet where most people die from covid-19 and has already accumulated 345,025 deaths in just thirteen months.
Brazil is the country with the second-highest number of deaths and confirmed cases of the disease, after the United States, and is currently facing the worst pandemic phase. Public hospitals are overwhelmed by the increase in admissions due to covid-19.
Nearly a third of the deaths reported Thursday occurred in São Paulo, the most developed and populous state. Local authorities reported 1,299 deaths in the last day, the second-worst record in the region.
The director of Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa), Antonio Barra Torres, admitted Thursday that the pandemic “is far from its end.”
“There is no conviction among us that the worst phase is over,” he said with resignation in an appearance before a Senate committee.
This new record comes on a day when the Supreme Court’s plenary analyzes whether to endorse the reopening of churches and temples, monocratically authorized by one of the eleven magistrates of the high court and supported by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who denies the seriousness of the coronavirus.
The second wave of the pandemic has been accelerating for weeks, also pushed by the circulation of variants of the virus considered more infectious, such as the Brazilian variant, known as P.1 and already predominant in several regions of the country, and the British variant.
Also, scientists, who had already warned that Brazil could become a “world laboratory” for new strains of the coronavirus due to its high incidence, are investigating two other new lineages that have emerged in the country with a large number of mutations, some of them linked to a greater power of infection.
With intensive care units 90% full in most of the country, the Brazilian public health system is also struggling with shortages of essential drugs for the most seriously ill patients with covid-19, such as sedatives, painkillers, and in some cases, oxygen.
Meanwhile, the vaccination campaign, which began on January 17, is progressing little by little, and to date, 10% of the 212 million Brazilians have received the first dose.