As virus surges, Brazilian leader lauds unproven nasal spray

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilians are dying in record numbers from covid-19. Intensive care units in a growing number of cities are full or near capacity as more contagious variants drive up cases. Elderly people have begun sleeping outside vaccination centers hoping to score a shot from the country’s limited stock.

But this is no time for new restrictions on businesses and transit, President Jair Bolsonaro said defiantly Thursday. Instead, his government is placing tremendous hope in an experimental nasal spray, under development in Israel to treat severely ill covid-19 patients, that the president has called a “miraculous product.”

On Saturday, Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo is scheduled to travel to Israel to meet scientists who are developing the spray, which has undergone only preliminary tests and is not being used in routine patient care anywhere.

Brazil’s vaccination campaign is off to a slow and chaotic start because the government was late to start negotiating access to vaccines, whose safety and efficacy Bolsonaro has called into question.

The Israeli scientists who are developing the nasal spray say it is too early to tell whether it will prove to be a pandemic game-changer.

The drug, called EXOCD24, aims to prevent “cytokine storms,” which are overwhelming immune system responses to covid-19 that can cause serious inflammation of the lungs, organ failure and sometimes death.