RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil reported on Wednesday 3,459 deaths linked to covid-19 in the last 24 hours and exceeded 360,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic is experiencing its worst phase in the country, according to data released by the Government.
In the last three days, the country has registered 8,747 deaths linked to the new coronavirus, spreading unchecked throughout the national territory, despite the restrictions on mobility in force in a good part of the Brazilian states.
The Ministry of Health reported 73,513 infections in the last day, bringing the total number of positive cases since February 26, 2020, when the first case was reported, to 13,673,507. However, health specialists estimate that, due to under-notification, the number could be up to “two or three times” higher.
Brazil is the country with the second-highest number of deaths from covid-19, after the United States, and the third-highest number of people infected, after the U.S. and India. However, it is currently the country with the highest number of deaths from covid-19 on the planet, with an upward trend.
According to official data, the average over the last week has been 3,015 deaths per day from the disease, which has caused 361,884 deaths in just over a year.
The most worrying situation is in São Paulo, the most populated state, with 46 million inhabitants and the richest in the country, which has recorded almost 85,500 deaths and 2.7 million infected.
On Wednesday, the São Paulo authorities urged the Ministry of Health to send medical material and medicines to intubate serious covid-19 patients, given the risk that the few existing supplies will run out in the next 24 hours.
At the judicial level, a report by the Court of Auditors of the Union (TCU), a body that audits the State’s public spending, pointed out serious omissions in the management of the former Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello, who was in office from May 2020 to March this year.
The instructor of the case, magistrate Benjamin Zymler, stated in his report that the portfolio avoided assuming leadership in the fight against the new coronavirus and “excluded itself from its responsibilities”.
In parallel, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating since last January Pazuello, who was appointed Minister of Health by President Jair Bolsonaro, despite having no experience in the health area, for alleged “omissions” in the oxygen crisis that took place in the state of Amazonas (north) last January.
In this sense, the Prosecutor’s Office filed this Wednesday action in court for “administrative impropriety” against Pazuello in the Amazonas crisis. It is estimated that at least 50 people died of asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen, which resulted in the sanitary collapse of that state.
All these processes could nourish the investigation commission’s content that the Senate will set up to investigate alleged “omissions” in the handling of the health crisis by the Bolsonaro government, which denies the seriousness of the pandemic.