Residents of Recife, Brazil, May 18, 2020. – Fotoarena / Sipa USA / SIPA
The Brazil, with an official total of 254,220 people infected, became the third country in the world on Monday in terms of contamination coronavirus, exceeding the United Kingdom which has nearly 250,000.
Brazil has registered 13,140 new cases in the past 24 hours, according to official figures. Scientists, however, estimate that, without testing, the actual numbers could be up to 15 times higher. In just seventy-two hours, Brazil surpassed France, Italy and Spain, leaping from 6th to 3rd place in terms of contamination. The United States (around 1.5 million) and Russia (290,678) occupy the first two places.
With 674 new deaths since Sunday, Brazil now officially deplores 16,792 deaths due to Covid-19, the sixth national death toll in the world. There too, the figures are very probably below reality.
New guidelines for treating infected people
As the pandemic advances in this country of 210 million people, the health ministry is occupied by an interim, General Eduardo Pazuello, who succeeded Friday the oncologist Nelson Teich. He resigned after 28 days from the government of the president Jair Bolsonaro, who calls the Covid-19 “small flu”, defends the containment measures taken by the local authorities and advocates the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, the efficacy of which against the coronavirus has not been demonstrated.
The Ministry of Health recently announced that it is developing new guidelines for treating infected people. “The goal is to start treatment before the disease gets worse and an intensive care unit is needed,” the statement said, without specifying the type of treatment.
The current protocol of the Ministry of Health directs towards the consumption of chloroquine only in moderate or severe cases, despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness and warnings from countries such as Canada and the United States about its possible serious side effects. The predecessor of Nelson Teich, the popular Luiz Henrique Mandetta, estimated that Brazil would experience another twelve “hard” weeks, in an interview with the daily Folha de S.Paulo.
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