Why did Brazil become the super contagious event of South America?

In recent weeks, the Brazilian P.1 variant has crept across rivers and borders, dodged the restrictive measures and spread across continental South America.

People walk on the International Square between the border of Santana do Livramento of Brazil and Rivera of Uruguay. Photo: Reuters Dr. César Salomé felt a sense of fear as he watched patients with COVID-19 rushing to be transferred to their intensive care unit. For many weeks, the doctor at the Mongrut Hospital in Lima (Peru) has been closely monitoring reports on the disease situation. P.1 – a variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the acute respiratory infections COVID-19, which originates in the Amazon jungle, has raged Brazil and put the country’s health system on the brink fall. Now, his patients are brought in critical condition. If their lungs are damaged, they will die within a few days. Even young and healthy people cannot be safe. He clearly noticed that the P.1 virus was attacking his home country. The Washington Post reported that the P.1 variant, with a series of mutations that made it more contagious as well as potentially dangerous, is no longer a Brazilian problem. It has become a problem for South America and the rest of the world. Fragile border line In recent weeks, P.1 has crept across rivers and borders, evading restrictive measures aimed at controlling its spread across the continent. Many regions of South America are worried that P.1 could quickly become the dominant variant, bringing Brazil’s humanitarian catastrophe – countless untreated patients, skyrocketing deaths – to the nation. their. Venezuelan infectious disease expert Julio Castro commented: “It’s spreading. Can’t stop it ”. A woman attending a family funeral dies of COVID-19 in Manaus, Brazil. Photo: AFP In Lima, scientists discovered that the strain originating in Brazil is responsible for 40% of the cases of COVID-19 here. In Uruguay, this rate is 30%. In Paraguay, health officials said half of all cases near the Brazilian border were infected with variant P.1. Other South American countries such as Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile all have detected P.1 in their territory. P.1’s genomic sequencing limitations prevent it from knowing how widely the virus actually spread. P.1 has been identified in over 20 countries, from Japan to the US. Hospital systems across South America are being pushed to the limit of overcrowding. Uruguay, one of the richest countries in South America and an early success in the pandemic, is at risk of failure of the health system. Meanwhile, health officials said Peru was on the verge of danger, with only 84 empty intensive care beds left by the end of March. The special care system in Paraguay has run out of beds. Ms. Elena Candia Florentín, President of the Paraguay Infectious Diseases Association, said that Paraguay has very little chance of stopping the spread of variant P.1. “With the health system collapsing, medicine is constantly running out, lack of early detection, lack of follow-up exposure, patients waiting in line for treatment, health workers not getting enough vaccines. as it is not clear when this vulnerable group will be vaccinated… the prospects in Paraguay are just dark, ”she explained. How P.1 spread throughout South America is an easy story. Nearly every country on the continent shares a land border with Brazil. People are concentrated in border towns, where traveling to another country can be as simple as crossing a street. The limited border surveillance measures have made the area a haven for smugglers. They also make it nearly impossible to control the spread of P.1. “We share 1,000 kilometers of terrestrial border with Brazil – the” manufacturing plant “of the largest variant in the world, said Gonzalo Moratorio, Uruguayan virologist who tracks the development of the P.1 variant. and is the epicenter of the crisis. And now P.1 doesn’t just appear in one country ”. Vaccine “thirst” The Brazilian city of Tabatinga deep in the Amazon rainforest, where officials suspect the virus has infiltrated from here into Colombia and Peru, is symbolic of the fight to stop this variant. The city of 70,000 people swept the P.1 virus earlier this year. Many people in Tabatinga have relatives living in neighboring countries so they are used to crossing the border by canoeing across the Amazon River to Peru or on foot to Colombia. “People carried the virus from one side of the river to the other,” said Sinesio Tikuna Trovão, a local leader. Crossing the river is no waste, just cross to the other bank to get to another country. The truck carrying 100,000 doses of the vaccine has just been sent to Luque, Paraguay. Photo: AFP Currently, P.1 has infiltrated many countries so its goal of stopping its spread will be very difficult. Most South American countries, with the exception of Brazil, applied strict controls last year. But efforts were wiped out by poverty, indifference and lack of trust. With battered national economies and rising poverty, public health experts worry that it will be difficult to sustain restrictions longer. In Brazil, despite record-high death tolls, many states are lifting restrictions. The deadlock and danger in South America has made vaccination the only way out. But this region still has limited access to the COVID-19 vaccine. The continent has not distributed vaccines domestically or has reached an agreement with pharmaceutical companies. According to the website Our World in Data, it is one of the most affected regions in the world but only provides 6% of the world’s vaccine dosage. Except for Chile, which is vaccinating people faster than anywhere in the Americas, but still suffers from an increase in the number of cases. “We should not just blame the policy of handling,” said Luis Felipe López-Calva, Regional Director of the United Nations Development Program for Latin America and the Caribbean. We need to understand the nature of the vaccine market. ” According to him, vaccines have become so scarce that national authorities have to impose control measures. It is almost impossible to know how much governments are paying for each dose of vaccine. Several regional blocs in other parts of the world, such as the African Union and the European Union, have negotiated joint contracts. But in South America, countries do not have a common voice, which reduces the bargaining power of each individual country. Mr. López-Calva said that the above situation is harmful to South American countries and also to fight against viruses around the world. Because, it is clear that no one is safe until everyone is protected. Paulo Buss, a famous Brazilian scientist, said the situation should not have been as bad as it is now. He is Brazil’s medical representative in the Union of South American Nations, repeatedly negotiating regional agreements with pharmaceutical companies before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this alliance was soon divided because of political differences. “It was the worst possible moment. Our negotiation efforts were fragmented. Multilateralism has been weakened,” Buss stressed.