Brazil Goes Crazy, 500,000 More People Die From COVID-19

Illustration (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Brazil's death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 500,000 on Saturday, June 19 as experts warned the world's second-deadliest outbreak could worsen. That's because of delayed vaccinations and the government's refusal to support social distancing measures.

Only 11% of Brazilians have been fully vaccinated and epidemiologists warn, with the onset of winter in the southern hemisphere and new variants of the coronavirus circulating, deaths will continue to rise even if immunizations increase.

Brazil has recorded 500,800 deaths out of 17,883,750 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to Health Ministry data on Saturday, the worst official death toll outside the United States. Over the past week, Brazil had an average of 2,000 deaths per day.

COVID-19 continues to ravage countries in the region with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reporting 1.1 million new cases of COVID-19 and 31,000 deaths in America last week. PAHO recorded gains in six Mexican states, Belize, Guatemala, Panama and parts of the Caribbean.

PAHO warns that Colombia's COVID-19 situation is at its worst, with intensive care unit beds filled in major cities.

Experts see the death toll in Brazil, already the highest in Latin America, rising much higher.

"I think we will reach 700,000 or 800,000 deaths before we see the effects of vaccination," said Gonzalo Vecina, former head of Brazil's health regulator Anvisa, which predicts an acceleration of deaths in the near future.

"We are experiencing the arrival of this new variant and the Indian variant will send us to redo."

Vecina criticized right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the pandemic, including his lack of a coordinated national response and his skepticism over vaccines, lockdowns and mask-wearing requirements, which he has tried to relax.

Thousands of Brazilians protested Bolsonaro's management of the pandemic in nationwide demonstrations on Saturday, blaming the government for the high death toll and calling for the president's ouster.

Raphael Guimaraes, a researcher at Brazil's biomedical center Fiocruz, said the postponement of the vaccination program in Latin America's most populous country meant its full effects would not be felt until September or so.

Guimaraes warned that Brazil could revisit the worst scene from the March-April peak, when the country experienced an average of 3,000 deaths per day.

"We are still in a very critical situation, with very high transmission rates and critical hospital bed occupancy in many places," he said.

This week, new confirmed cases in Brazil rose to an average of more than 70,000 per day, surpassing India for the most in the world.

Vaccination will be crucial in defeating the virus in Brazil, as the country failed to reach a consensus on social distancing and masks, said Ester Sabino, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo.

"We really need to ramp up vaccination very quickly," he said.

However, evidence from neighboring Chile, which like Brazil relies heavily on a vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech, suggests that it may be months before mass immunization will effectively curb transmission.

Nearly half of Chile's citizens have been vaccinated, but their capital, Santiago, has just returned to lockdown as cases soar again near peak levels.

Brazil would need to inoculate about 80 million people to reach Chile's current per capita vaccination rate.

That would require a more consistent supply of vaccines and ingredients in Brazil, which has been volatile in recent months, as imports from China were delayed after Bolsonaro antagonized Beijing with comments he deemed anti-China.