The Health Secretary of São Paulo, Jean Gorinchteyn, defended in an interview with CNN this Monday (29) that city halls still consider “austere” measures in relation to the realization of New Year’s Eve events, regardless of the presence or not of the Ômicron variant in Brazil.
“City halls, which have autonomy for New Year’s Eve, need to be aware because [as festas] they are moments of agglomeration in which compliance with sanitary rules does not always end up happening”, he said.
“It’s worth an austere measure by city halls to reevaluate, at least at this time, New Year’s Eve, regardless of whether or not we have mutant strains.”
The Health Secretary stated that the state will not “interfere with the autonomy of municipalities”, but noted that, in any case, people usually gather at private parties to celebrate the turn of the year.
Gorinchteyn called for attention and “common sense”, since, for him, it is still necessary to vaccinate more people against Covid-19 at this time.
“In São Paulo, 75% of the population is fully immunized, in all age groups. Over 18 years, we have 94% of the population fully vaccinated. But we have 4 million and 300 thousand absentees, especially between 12 and 29 years old, [uma faixa etária] who go out, go to parties and clubs and end up circulating the virus”, he said.
“We are implementing campaigns, and we will have to look closely at vaccination rates to define the holding of events that gather more people and can find people not ideally protected and immunized,” he added.
Ômicron variant
Jean Gorinchteyn defined the current situation in São Paulo with the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus as a situation of “attention” and not “concern” – a classification given by the World Health Organization (WHO) to define the potentials of the new strain of the virus in global scale.
For the secretary, it is necessary to better understand the variant and assess its impact on the six countries in southern Africa that have had more cases of the disease with these mutations so far.
“What we have of information is that, despite everything, in most cases [a Ômicron] it is a promoter of mild cases and mild symptoms, and the virulence was not so impactful even when we found a vulnerable population”, he said. “On the other hand, the dissemination profile was higher”.
The secretary added that Brazil “does not even have a documented case” so far, and that the suspicion analyzed in São Paulo was raised after the traveler took the Covid-19 test on his own when returning, on Saturday (27), of South Africa.
The RT-PCR test performed by the passenger before boarding had been negative, and he was asymptomatic, Gorinchteyn said.
“We are daily attentive to all the indices and information from Ômicron”, he declared.
Reference: CNN Brasil
