Zurich/Geneva, Switzerland
Reuters
The Americas are bearing the brunt of the global coronavirus pandemic at present, the World Health Organization said on Friday, with North and South America currently having four of the 10 worst hit countries in the world.
The disease was “highly active” in Central and South America, the WHO’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan said, highlighting problems in Brazil and Mexico.
Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organisation, attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on 3rd May, 2019. PICTURE: Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File photo.
The current situation in Brazil, now one of the global hot-spots for the virus, was of increasing concern especially in heavily-populated cities, he told a press conference.
BRAZIL’S DEATH TOLL SURGES PAST UK
Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll overtook Britain’s on Friday to become the second highest in the world with 41,828 dead, but the World Health Organization said the nation’s health system was standing up to the pressure.
“The system as such from the data we see is not overwhelmed,” the WHO’s top emergencies expert Dr Mike Ryan said, with few areas of Brazil using more than 80 per cent of their hospitals’ intensive care bed capacity.
Brazil clearly has hotspots in heavily-populated cities, he said, but overall its health system is coping with the world’s second worst number of infections.
The Ministry of Health reported on Friday a cumulative total of 828,810 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 25,982 new infections in the last 24 hours, and another 909 deaths, numbers second only to the United States.
“The data we have at the moment supports [the vision of] a system under pressure but a system still coping with the number of severe cases,” Ryan said at a briefing in Geneva.
Brazil’s Health Ministry has reported more than 1,200 deaths a day since Tuesday, a mounting toll as the country moves to ease quarantine restrictions and reopen businesses, a move called for by President Jair Bolsonaro.
The right-wing leader has minimised the gravity of the novel coronavirus, dismissing it “a little flu,” and has accused state governments of exaggerating the number of infections and deaths to undermine him.
On Thursday night, Bolsonaro encouraged his supporters to “find a way to get inside” hospitals to film whether the ICU beds are occupied or not, to provide images that the police and Brazil’s intelligence agency could investigate.
Brazilian shoppers lined up for hours and crowded into malls that reopened on Thursday in the country’s two largest cities. Shoppers continued to crowd malls on Friday, Brazil’s equivalent to Valentine’s Day.
Inside stores in Sao Paulo and Rio, distancing rules were followed and shoppers were required to wear protective masks. Temperatures were taken before people entered some malls.
A poll by brokerage XP Investimentos released on Friday showed that 52 per cent of Brazilians now favour easing quarantine restrictions, versus 44 per cent against, even though 61 per cent of those surveyed believe the worst is still to come.
Last month, an XP Investimentos poll had found that 76 per cent saw social distancing as the best way to avoid the spread of the virus and 57 per cent thought quarantine measures should remain in place until the risk of infection subsided.
– STEPHANIE NEBEHAY in Geneva and ANTHONY BOADLEin Brasilia, Reuters
The country’s health system was “still coping”, although some intensive care units were at a critical stage and under heavy pressure with more than 90 per cent bed occupancy rates, Ryan said.
Mexico meanwhile has nearly 130,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and more than 15,000 deaths, the WHO said.
Brazil is the second worst hit country in the world, with more than 800,000 cases and 41,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
Both countries lag behind the United States, the worst hit country, which has had more than two million cases and nearly 114,000 deaths.
“We are very much in the upswing of this pandemic, particularly in the global South,” Ryan said. “Some countries are having trouble exiting of the so-called lockdowns as they are seeing an increase in cases.”
It was possible the disease was spreading again as societies reopened and people began meeting again, especially when there was inadequate testing and social distancing was insufficient.
Still, he acknowledged the pressures on countries to get back to normal especially to reduce the economic damage the crisis has wrought.
“There is a careful balance between keeping people at home…and the untoward effect of that on economic and society. That is not an easy balance. There are no correct answers,” Ryan said.
Ryan said that although some countries appeared to be over the worst of the virus, clusters of the disease were still occurring.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus said that vigilance was required worldwide against the “very dangerous virus” even in regions where it appeared to be on the wane.
“Our fear is although it is declining in Europe it is increasing in other parts of the world. Even Europe cannot be safe because the virus can be reintroduced to Europe,” he said.
Tedros was also firm on the need for any vaccines had to be shared fairly between countries, amid concerns some could hoard any drugs they develop.
Vaccines should be made available as a global public good, to ensure everyone had fair access to any life-saving products that are developed, Tedros said.
Meanwhile, a new study suggests requiring the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in areas at the epicenter of the global pandemic may have prevented tens of thousands of infections.
Mask-wearing is even more important for preventing the virus’ spread and the sometimes deadly COVID-19 illness it causes than social distancing and stay-at-home orders, researchers said, in the study published in PNAS: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
Infection trends shifted dramatically when mask-wearing rules were implemented on 6th April in northern Italy and 17th April in New York City – at the time among the hardest hit areas of the world by the health crisis – the study found.
“This protective measure alone significantly reduced the number of infections, that is, by over 78,000 in Italy from April 6 to May 9 and over 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9,” researchers calculated.
When mask-wearing went into effect in New York, the daily new infection rate fell by about three per cent per day, researchers said. In the rest of the country, daily new infections continued to increase.
Direct contact precautions – social distancing, quarantine and isolation, and hand sanitising – were all in place before mask-wearing rules went into effect in Italy and New York City. But they only help minimise virus transmission by direct contact, while face covering helps prevent airborne transmission, the researchers say.
“The unique function of face covering to block atomization and inhalation of virus-bearing aerosols accounts for the significantly reduced infections,” they said. That would indicate “that airborne transmission of COVID-19 represents the dominant route for infection.”
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday urged organisers of large gatherings that involve “shouting, chanting or singing to strongly encourage the use of cloth face coverings to lower the risk of spreading the coronavirus.”
– With NANCY LAPID
