Rio Could Reach 24,000 Coronavirus Cases in Month If Prevention Measures Disregarded

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Edmar Santos, the State Secretary of Health, said that if prevention measures are disrespected, the state of Rio could record 24,000 cases of the disease within a month.

On Sunday, March 15th, Rio de Janeiro recorded its first coronavirus patient in a critical condition. He is a man in his 60s admitted to a private hospital.

On Sunday’s report, Rio de Janeiro recorded 24 confirmed and 95 suspected cases – 147 were ruled out. There were 200 cases throughout the country.

“With the exception of work, food purchases or visits to doctors, people should remain at home. If this measure is implemented, the transmission is no longer one to three, but one to one. As a result, we could have three or four thousand cases,” the secretary said during an interview.

The need to remain at home was emphasized by Governor Wilson Witzel.

“If people fail to follow the guidelines, in approximately three weeks we will have more than 24,000 people infected and there will certainly be difficulties to meet this volume in the ICU network we currently have”.

‘We have learned from Italy’s mistakes’

The secretary used examples from foreign countries that had very different results in dealing with the coronavirus.

“We learned from Italy and Spain’s mistakes, but we need the population to follow us. If people do not understand this and carry on with this behavior of going to the beach, of crowding bars and malls, of disregarding the guidelines, we will have a higher number of cases than the health system is able to cope with”.

According to him, in South Korea, the percentage of deaths caused by the virus varies between 0.5 and 0.7 percent. In Italy, that figure is 7.2 percent.

“It’s not the lethality of the virus, it’s the lethality of disorganization, of people who didn’t believe they should remain at home”.

Chaotic scenario

Colonel Roberto Robadey, general commander of the Fire Department, expects that every seven days the recorded cases of coronavirus contamination will multiply by 10.

March 7th – Two cases;

March 14th – 20 cases (now 24);

March 21st – 240 cases;

March 28th – 2,400 cases;

April 4th – 24,000 cases.

With 24,000 cases, the picture in the hospital network will be chaotic. There will be 3,600 hospitalizations and 1,200 patients in ICUs. This picture could be prevented if the population remained at home.

It is expected that 85 percent of cases will be mild and 15 percent will need hospitalization. One third – five percent of the total – of cases that require hospitalization will be in ICUs.

Source: G1