Brazil adrift as death toll skyrockets
BRASILIA: Five months after confirming its first case of the new coronavirus, Brazil is fast approaching the bleak milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, a tragedy experts blame on the country’s lack of coherent response.
It will be just the second country to cross that grim threshold, after the United States.
“It’s a tragedy, one of the worst Brazil has ever seen,” said sociologist Celso Rocha de Barros, as the number of infections in the sprawling South American country approached three million.
Brazil confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus on February 26. The country of 212 million people registered its first death on March 16.
“At that point, Brazil was more or less getting organised to deal with the pandemic,” said Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo. But then, political chaos ensued. Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro condemned the “hysteria” around the virus and railed against decisions by state and local authorities to impose stay-at-home measures to contain it, arguing the economic damage would be worse than the disease.
Meanwhile, the country’s infection curve exploded.
The toll stood at 2.9 million infections and 97,256 deaths late on Wednesday. The country appeared to be on track to record its 100,000th death at the weekend.
The president has continued to downplay the virus, even after catching it himself last month. He was forced into quarantine for three weeks.
“Nearly everyone here is going to catch it eventually. What are you afraid of? Face up to it,” he said after emerging from isolation.
The message from the Bolsonaro government has been “the exact opposite” of what it should have been, said Mr Barros.
“Lockdown is difficult. It has to be coordinated by a leader with political credibility,” he said.
“You have to explain to people that it’s hard, but necessary to avoid a massacre.”
Instead, most Brazilian states started exiting lockdown in June, under pressure from Mr Bolsonaro and despite warnings from experts that it was too soon.