Brazil’s Covid-19 resurgence is pushing hospitals to overflowing

He never left the government’s official list for his transfer. “No vacancy appeared at the time I needed her and she ended up dying on Saturday,” Ravippi said. “We did the funeral on Sunday.”

The fierce new wave of coronavirus that claimed Firmino’s life is flooding intensive care beds in São Paulo and across the country.

As of Sunday, 21 Brazilian states and the Federal District had an ICU employment rate of more than 80%. Of these, 14 were on the verge of collapse with more than 90% occupancy.

In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, ICUs are so overcrowded that the largest public hospital treating Covid-19 cases in the state capital of Porto Alegre said Sunday it was forced to close the doors to new patients.

“The Covid ward of the hospital’s ICU already has an occupancy rate of 132%,” the management of Porto Alegre Hospital Hospital das Clinicas said in a statement.

With full rooms comes the growing demand for oxygen and other commodities. In the north, the state of Rondonia occupies 97.6% of the ICU and the Attorney General’s Office has warned that the local oxygen supply could be depleted in just two weeks.

Brazilian Health Minister Pazuello, currently under investigation for his treatment of the Manaus crisis, recently estimated that March would be available from 22 to 25 million doses, a sharp drop from previous predictions that would be available up to 46 million of vaccine doses this month.

The federal government is negotiating new vaccine agreements, including a purchase order for Sputnik V. made in Russia, but for now there is a shortage. In the coastal city of Rio de Janeiro, officials have already been forced to suspend the administration of the first doses. The campaign will be restarted when vaccines are available through Brazil’s health ministry, Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes said.

With the daily death toll in the thousands, every hour that passes means lives lost.

According to hospital officials, in a sad five-day stretch this month, a dozen Covid-19 patients died at Dr. Akira Tada. They were all on a waiting list to be transferred to an ICU.

Dr. Maria Dolores da Silva, the hospital’s emergency medicine doctor, has never seen anything like it. A 42-year-old veteran of the Brazilian public health system, she doesn’t usually talk about her job, but in an interview with CNN she bowed her head and cried thinking about the loss.

“Psychologically, it affects us,” Dr. da Silva said. “As much as we want to be strong, feelings come to the surface because of so much suffering we see.”

A local court recently intervened and ordered that at least 17 ICU beds be made available to those waiting to be transferred, noting public statistics from the State of São Paulo, which state that approximately 10% of ICU beds are available. of the region are still available. The state faces a $ 6,000 fine for each day that does not provide beds for these patients.

But dozens more patients than Dr. Akira Tada is still waiting to be transferred to treatment. On Sunday morning a 13th patient died waiting.

By Sunday night, none of the remaining patients had been transferred.