Via The Guardian: Experts warn Brazil facing darkest days of Covid crisis as deaths hit highest level. Excerpt
Health experts and lawmakers have warned Brazil is steaming into the darkest days of its coronavirus catastrophe, as fatalities soared to new heights and one prominent politician compared the crisis to an atomic bomb.
Politicians from across the spectrum voiced anger and exasperation at the deteriorating situation on Monday, after Brazil’s weekly average of Covid deaths hit its highest level since the epidemic began last February and hospitals around the country reported being swamped.
According to the newspaper O Globo, intensive care units in 17 of Brazil’s 26 states were near capacity, while six states and the capital Brasília had run out of intensive care beds altogether.
“We are living through one of the worst moments in our history,” said Tasso Jereissati, an influential centre-right politician who is among a group of senators demanding a congressional investigation into President Jair Bolsonaro’s globally condemned handling of the pandemic.
Renato Casagrande, the leftwing governor of Espírito Santo state, told the news website UOL he believed Bolsonaro’s irresponsible behaviour had cost Brazilian lives.
“We’ve lost the war … It’s as if an atomic bomb has landed on Brazil,” Casagrande said, pointing to Brazil’s soaring death toll which, at more than 255,000 people, is the world’s second highest after the US.
Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who was Bolsonaro’s health minister until he was fired last April, told O Globo that Brazil’s failure to launch a rapid vaccination scheme meant the average daily death toll could soon rise to over 2,000.
“I don’t know where this will end … The country is running the risk of becoming one big Manaus,” Mandetta warned in reference to the Amazonian capital which made international headlines in January after hospitals ran out of oxygen because of a Covid surge.
