The country is seeing a surge in cases of a seemingly more contagious variant infecting people who have already been sick. And on Wednesday, Brazil – second only to the US in the number of people who have died – hit their highest death toll number recorded in a single day: more than 1,900.
The health-care system is about to collapse – even in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous city with the largest medical infrastructure in the country, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian-born Duke University neuroscientist, told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.
He describes a "horrible" situation with hospitals at full capacity, turning people away, with some left to die in ambulances or on the street. "They [hospitals] are refusing to take patients because they cannot find a bed in the ICU. So, let's say you have a heart attack or you have a stroke or you had a car accident ... people are actually dying, waiting for ICU bed."
And for a vaccine rollout, Nicolelis says Brazil, known as one of the best countries for vaccinating citizens for diseases like measles and polio, "didn't do what it had to do" to procure and distribute COVID vaccines.
ZZ/PR
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