Coronavirus cases and deaths have soared in Brazil and India as government incompetence, public apathy and new variants combine to take a vast toll on vulnerable populations.
Brazil, home to 212 million people and now widely considered to be the “epicentre” of the global pandemic, recorded more than 4,000 deaths for the first time on Tuesday. With the graph of fatalities rising at a near-vertical rate, Covid-19 is expected to claim the lives of half a million Brazilians by July.
Intensive care units across the country are almost all at 90 per cent capacity, with many hospitals setting up overflow mortuaries. One troubling development is the number of patients aged 18-45 who are dying in intensive care: the figure nearly tripled between October and February.
Despite this, President Bolsonaro, a right-wing former army captain, has opposed strict lockdown measures. Since the start of the pandemic he has engaged in a battle with state governors, including some of his political allies, demanding they allow life to continue as normal. His messaging, that masks are “un-manly” and Covid-19 is no big deal, has led millions of Brazilians to pay scant regard to social distancing.
As a result, experts describe Brazil as a “brewery” for new variants, the most dominant of which, known as P1, is helping to drive a surge of cases across the world, including in Europe and the US.
Advertisement
The highly contagious variant is seen as a likely accelerator of death rates among Brazil’s neighbours. All five of the countries recording the highest number of excess deaths are in Latin America. Top of the list is Peru, followed by Ecuador. Both have registered more than 1,000 excess deaths per million people since the pandemic began, twice their historical averages.
Along with the P1 variant, a slow vaccine rollout and inequality are pushing up cases and deaths. Hundreds of millions of people in Latin America depend on daily wages, meaning lockdowns cannot be enforced for long. Underfunded state healthcare, in contrast to often excellent private hospitals, means that Covid-19 death rates are higher among the poor than in wealthier populations. Half of Brazilians with Covid-19 in state-run intensive care units die, whereas in private clinics two thirds survive.
It is a similar story in India, where coronavirus infections surged to a record, with almost 116,000 new cases recorded. Delhi, home to more than 20 million, has imposed an evening curfew in the hope of containing the spike.
Experts have blamed the rocketing numbers on a collapse of public safety protocols, with Indians ignoring the risks to attend huge religious gatherings, political rallies, weddings and even cricket matches.
India’s health ministry confirmed 115,736 new infections over the past 24 hours, the second time the country has breached 100,000 cases this week and the highest seen since the start of the pandemic. India has now recorded 12.8 million cases, the third-highest behind the US and Brazil, but India outstrips daily caseloads in both those countries.
Advertisement
The surge in infections has increased pressure on India’s vaccination drive, the largest on the planet, which is floundering, despite being the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world. India has administered almost 90 million jabs so far, but remains well behind its target to inoculate 300 million by July, with many afraid of the injection or complacent about the virus.
Several states have criticised Delhi for micromanaging the vaccine drive and hampering supplies, with reports that jabs have run out in some districts. Adar Poonawalla, head of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, said production capacity was “very stressed . . . still short of being able to supply to every Indian”.
Rampant infection rates in Latin America and India are by no means unique. In France, health officials are worried at the possible spread of the Brazilian strain, now accounting for 1 per cent of new cases. The country has failed to bring the pandemic under control and is stumbling over a vaccination rollout.
In Germany, the fractured regional government system — which blocks Berlin from imposing unilateral rules — has been blamed for a failure in devising a national lockdown and coherent vaccine strategy. New infection rates are surging.
However, while the US has managed to vaccinate more than 40 per cent of its adult population with one jab, there are concerns among public health officials about new strains, already present in the country, taking hold.
