Hospitals in Latin America buckling under coronavirus strain
Warning Brazil’s health system collapsing, while Peru said to be ‘in bad shape’
A healthcare worker at a field hospital in Guarulhos, São Paulo state, Brazil’s hardest hit region. Photograph: Amanda Perobelli/Reuters
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro, Dan Collyns in Lima and Sam Jones-
GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization expressed concern on Wednesday about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations have begun emerging from lockdown.Hospitals in parts of Latin America are beginning to buckle under the strain of coronavirus, with experts warning that health systems in five Brazilian states are falling apart and the head of Peru’s Covid-19 taskforce admitting that the country is “in bad shape”.
Although infection rates have been falling in Asia and parts of Europe, the pandemic is still on the rise in Latin America. Brazil, which has now overtaken the UK as the world’s third worst affected country, logged a record 1,179 new deaths on Tuesday night, taking its total to 17,971. The highest daily toll before Tuesday had been 881 deaths on 12 May, and the country currently has 271,885 cases, placing it behind only the US and Russia.
Peru is the second worst affected Latin American country, with more than 100,000 cases and a death toll of 3,024, according to official figures on Tuesday. By last Friday, intensive care units in the capital, Lima, were operating at 80% capacity.
In neighbouring Chile, more than 90% of intensive care beds were full last week in the capital, Santiago, and 1,000 emergency graves had been dug in the city’s main cemetery. Officials in Peru and Chile are planning to try to ease the strain by moving patients from their capitals to smaller regional hospitals, but to do so would run the risk of spreading the virus.
On Wednesday, Brazil’s hardest hit state, São Paulo, said it expected its overstretched health system to collapse within three weeks. Health specialists said the situation in the country was slipping out of control.
“Brazil lost its way in responding to the pandemic,” said Claudio Maierovitch, head of an epidemiology and health vigilance group at the Fiocruz government research institute in Brasília. Maierovitch said overloaded health systems in five states were now collapsing, and added that São Paulo’s three-week prediction appeared “optimistic”. Brazil has lost two health ministers in a less than a month, while the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic.
As the virus spreads across Brazil’s interior, doctors are doing the best they can. The Amazon town of Tefé in the hard-hit state of Amazonas has no intensive care beds – the nearest are in the capital Manaus, 550km away, where overloaded hospitals have turned patients away. The local hospital has had to improvise its own unit with five respirators, according to its infectious diseases specialist, Laura Crivellari. She added: “We are almost at the limit.”
Bolsonaro ignored the record new death toll on Tuesday night during a Facebook Live interview. Instead, he cracked a joke after announcing a new government protocol approving the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 patients suffering lighter symptoms. Chloroquine is currently given only to those who are seriously ill. “The right wing take chloroquine, the left wing take Tubáina,” he said, referring to a fizzy drink.
Studies have shown that the drug is not effective for serious patients and even presented “potential safety hazards”. “There is no proof. They say it works but do not show the results,” said Ana Ribeiro, epidemiological service coordinator at São Paulo’s Emílio Ribas hospital.
Bolsonaro eventually acknowledged the death toll in a tweet on Wednesday, writing: “Difficult days. We mourn those who left us.”
His ally, Donald Trump, alluded to the situation in Brazil after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, and said he was considering a travel ban. “I don’t want people coming over here and infecting our people,” he said. “I don’t want people over there sick either.”
Pan American Health Organization officials have expressed concerns over the virus’s spread in the triple-border region between Brazil, Peru and Colombia. They have also called for special measures to protect vulnerable populations in the indigenous minorities and poorer regions.
While Peru’s high numbers could reflect increased and better targeted testing rather than an underlying trend, the increase in new cases is undeniable. Last week the country’s president, Martín Vizcarra, said Peru had carried out 600,000 coronavirus tests – “a lot more than any other country in the region, compared with Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile; countries with an even larger population than Peru”. But Pilar Mazzetti, the head of Peru’s Covid-19 taskforce, offered a sobering assessment: “We’re in bad shape,” she said. “This is war.”
On Tuesday, the World Bank warned that 60 million people could fall into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic and said it anticipated a 5% contraction in the world economy this year, with severe effects on the poorest countries.
Action Against Hunger has also warned of devastating humanitarian consequences for Latin America. “In a region where one in three people was already living with food insecurity before the first Covid-19 cases, a 5% shrinking of the economy and an 11-point rise in unemployment … would make this the biggest crisis of the past century,” said Benedetta Lettera, the NGO’s Latin America chief.
In neighbouring Chile, more than 90% of intensive care beds were full last week in the capital, Santiago, and 1,000 emergency graves had been dug in the city’s main cemetery. Officials in Peru and Chile are planning to try to ease the strain by moving patients from their capitals to smaller regional hospitals, but to do so would run the risk of spreading the virus.
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“Brazil lost its way in responding to the pandemic,” said Claudio Maierovitch, head of an epidemiology and health vigilance group at the Fiocruz government research institute in Brasília. Maierovitch said overloaded health systems in five states were now collapsing, and added that São Paulo’s three-week prediction appeared “optimistic”. Brazil has lost two health ministers in a less than a month, while the president, Jair Bolsonaro, has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic.
As the virus spreads across Brazil’s interior, doctors are doing the best they can. The Amazon town of Tefé in the hard-hit state of Amazonas has no intensive care beds – the nearest are in the capital Manaus, 550km away, where overloaded hospitals have turned patients away. The local hospital has had to improvise its own unit with five respirators, according to its infectious diseases specialist, Laura Crivellari. She added: “We are almost at the limit.”
Bolsonaro ignored the record new death toll on Tuesday night during a Facebook Live interview. Instead, he cracked a joke after announcing a new government protocol approving the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 patients suffering lighter symptoms. Chloroquine is currently given only to those who are seriously ill. “The right wing take chloroquine, the left wing take Tubáina,” he said, referring to a fizzy drink.
Studies have shown that the drug is not effective for serious patients and even presented “potential safety hazards”. “There is no proof. They say it works but do not show the results,” said Ana Ribeiro, epidemiological service coordinator at São Paulo’s Emílio Ribas hospital.
Bolsonaro eventually acknowledged the death toll in a tweet on Wednesday, writing: “Difficult days. We mourn those who left us.”
His ally, Donald Trump, alluded to the situation in Brazil after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, and said he was considering a travel ban. “I don’t want people coming over here and infecting our people,” he said. “I don’t want people over there sick either.”
Pan American Health Organization officials have expressed concerns over the virus’s spread in the triple-border region between Brazil, Peru and Colombia. They have also called for special measures to protect vulnerable populations in the indigenous minorities and poorer regions.
While Peru’s high numbers could reflect increased and better targeted testing rather than an underlying trend, the increase in new cases is undeniable. Last week the country’s president, Martín Vizcarra, said Peru had carried out 600,000 coronavirus tests – “a lot more than any other country in the region, compared with Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile; countries with an even larger population than Peru”. But Pilar Mazzetti, the head of Peru’s Covid-19 taskforce, offered a sobering assessment: “We’re in bad shape,” she said. “This is war.”
On Tuesday, the World Bank warned that 60 million people could fall into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic and said it anticipated a 5% contraction in the world economy this year, with severe effects on the poorest countries.
Action Against Hunger has also warned of devastating humanitarian consequences for Latin America. “In a region where one in three people was already living with food insecurity before the first Covid-19 cases, a 5% shrinking of the economy and an 11-point rise in unemployment … would make this the biggest crisis of the past century,” said Benedetta Lettera, the NGO’s Latin America chief.
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