São Paulo Government Updates State’s Flexibility Plan Rules

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Monday, July 27th, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria announced new rules for the plan to ease quarantine in the municipalities of the State of São Paulo.

The change refers to the lowering of the minimum ICU bed occupancy rate for a municipality to change phases in the São Paulo Plan. The São Paulo authorities determined that the Plan’s current rules require beds to remain vacant and hamper the progress of regions to less restrictive phases.

Doria referred to the new rules of the São Paulo Plan as “technical recalibration” and stated that “the goal is to improve the Plan to make it more efficient and adequate to the reality we are experiencing in the pandemic,” said the governor during the 100th press conference on measures to fight the novel coronavirus at the Bandeirantes Palace.

With the new rules, for a municipality to be able to switch to the green phase, the less restricted one, the ICU occupancy rate must fall below 70 percent, and not below 60 percent as before. For the orange and yellow phases, bed occupancy should be up to 80 percent. Any occupancy above this rate forces the municipality to remain in the red band – with further restrictions for activities.

Moreover, for a municipality to reach the green phase, it must have no more than 40 hospitalizations per 100,000 inhabitants and over five deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. According to the latest update of the São Paulo Plan, no municipality has progressed to the green phase, but three regions have evolved to milder phases: Araçatuba, Araraquara, and Campinas.

To assess the situation in your municipality, visit the São Paulo Plan website.

According to Patricia Ellen, São Paulo’s Economic Development Secretary, each region must remain for at least four weeks in the yellow phase before progressing to the green phase.

For the secretary, the three points addressed in this update are the stability criteria in the assessments of each region; the release of hospital capacity; and changes in the indicator scale – particularly from the yellow to green phase.

According to the governor, the number of deaths decreased 27 percent last week in the São Paulo state capital – which helped lower the total numbers for the state of São Paulo by four percent. In inland cities, however, there was an increase of 16 percent.

According to Jean Gorinchteyn, São Paulo’s Secretary of Health, the state of São Paulo has registered 487,654 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 21,676 deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Still according to the Secretary, the ICU bed occupancy rate is 63.6 percent in Greater São Paulo and 65.9 percent in the state as a whole.

Of the state’s 645 municipalities, 638 recorded at least one infection, while 455 cities counted at least one fatal victim of the disease.

Source: InfoMoney