Brazil registered this Sunday (5) 66 deaths and 4,844 cases of Covid-19 in the last 24 hours. The moving averages of deaths and infections were 194 and 8,884, respectively, according to data from the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass). Thus, the country accumulates a total of 615,636 deaths and 22,143,091 confirmed infections since the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020.
Last Saturday (4), the state of São Paulo registered less than a thousand patients with Covid-19 admitted to ICU beds for the first time, according to the history of monitoring by the Covid-19 Census.
André Kalil, infectious disease physician and researcher at the University of Nebraska, reinforced in an interview with CNN this Sunday (5) that vaccines and restrictive measures are the best form of prevention against the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus. “For us to prevent Ômicron, we have to do what we already know in these two years: we will have to vaccinate”, said Kalil.
Due to the new variant of the coronavirus, Ômicron, 23 Brazilian capitals and the Federal District canceled New Year’s Eve parties. For the infectologist at Instituto Emílio Ribas Jamal Suleiman, the decision was the right one. “This decision [de suspender o Réveillon] is fully correct. We have been pointing out that, in view of this scenario, it is not recommended to make these huge agglomerations, which are common at these times of New Year’s Eve and Carnival.”
In an interview with CNN, the infectologist Marcos Boulos explained that the Ômicron variant is concerned by mutations where vaccines act. “THE [Organização Mundial da Saúde] WHO defined that when they receive a Greek letter, they are risk variants”, said Boulos.
More expensive
According to a study released last week by the Max Planck Institute in Germany, PFF2 type masks, which are equivalent to KN95 masks, offer almost 100% protection against the coronavirus.
According to the authors of the study, the risk of an infected person transmitting the disease indoors at a distance of three meters is high. It takes less than five minutes for an unvaccinated person standing next to a person with Covid-19 to become infected with almost 100% certainty, the study says. However, if both are wearing well-fitting medical masks or – better yet – FFP2 masks, the risk drops dramatically.
Reference: CNN Brasil
