Via BBC News Brasil: 'Tragedy announced': the factors that caused the South region to collapse with deaths by covid. Excerpt from the Google translation:
On March 2, Rio Grande do Sul broke its record of deaths by covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic: 184 people died within 24 hours. A day later, there were 179 more victims, the second worst day since March last year.
In Santa Catarina, 86 people died of covid-19 on day 2. The next day, there were 94 more deaths - the worst 24 hours since October.
March 2 also marked the second worst day of the pandemic in the entire South, including Paraná. There were 504 deaths.
The region has been experiencing a catastrophic scenario in recent weeks: in addition to the explosion of coronavirus transmissions and deaths due to the disease, the populations of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina face a lack of places in intensive care units (ICUs) in several cities.
The occupancy of beds in Porto Alegre, for example, already exceeds 100%. According to a survey carried out by the "United for Health Against Collapse" campaign, until last Thursday (03/04), hospitals were operating at 103.7% of their capacity. In some of them, such as Hospital São Lucas and Hospital Moinhos de Vento, the rate is above 130%.
According to figures compiled until February 5 by the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass), Rio Grande do Sul has 676 thousand confirmed cases and 13,188 deaths caused by covid-19.
Santa Catarina, on the other hand, accounted for 7,816 deaths and 700,000 cases.
In Paraná, 12,196 people died of covid-19, and 672 thousand infections were registered.
What explains this scenario?
For researchers studying the spread of covid-19 across the country, since the end of last year there was already evidence that the three states would face an exponential increase in covid-19.
"This is an announced tragedy. Since November, scientists have already warned that the South would undergo a devastating wave of covid. But nothing was done, there was total disregard for the warnings we had been giving", says Domingos Alves, professor of Social Medicine at Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (USP) in Ribeirão Preto.
