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HEALTH-VIRUS-BRAZIL
More than 80% of intubated Covid patients die in Brazil
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 30, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – More than 80 percent of
Covid-19 patients who have to be intubated in Brazil have died since
the start of the second wave of infections ravaging the country,
according to researchers.
The mortality rate since February 15 — 83.5 percent — is far
higher than in countries such as Mexico, Britain, Germany or Italy,
highlighting how the South American country’s hospitals are struggling
to deal with a surge of infections that has pushed many to the brink
of collapse.
“It shows the fragility of the health system, which was already
suffering from years of under-investment and got overwhelmed by the
large number of cases,” Fernando Bozza, a researcher at leading public
health institute Fiocruz, told AFP on Monday.
His research team partnered with the University of Sao Paulo to
compile data from public and private hospitals on the clinical
outcomes of Covid-19 patients with severe breathing difficulty who are
intubated and put on ventilators.
A first study of 250,000 patients from February 15 to August 15 last
year that was published in The Lancet medical journal found the
mortality rate for intubated patients in Brazil was 78.7 percent.
That figure was already well above the number for Britain (69
percent), Germany (52.8 percent), Italy (51.7 percent) or Mexico (73.7
percent).
But now the rate is even worse, amid an explosion of severe cases in
Brazil, Bozza said.
“Some hospitals are so overwhelmed they have to intubate patients
outside the intensive care unit. That’s the case for 17 percent of
hospitals in the northern region,” he told AFP.
His team found big differences in patient outcomes by region and
between public and private hospitals.
Impoverished regions such as the north and northeast had mortality
rates for intubated patients of around 90 percent, while the figure
was 79.8 percent in the wealthy southeast — and just 25 percent at
prestigious Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo.
Brazil’s average daily death toll from Covid-19 has nearly
quadrupled since the start of the year, to more than 2,600.
Experts blame the surge partly on a local variant of the virus that
is believed to be more contagious.
Nearly 314,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil, second only
to the United States.
BSS/AFP/MRU/0010hrs