The emergence of a variant of the coronavirus as transmissible as Omicron it was not expected, according to the infectologist and professor at the USP School of Medicine, Álvaro da Costa.
In an interview with CNN Brasil, the doctor stated that the data so far indicate that the variant is “much less severe. But it is not possible to say with certainty yet why unvaccinated people can develop a more serious form of the disease”.
“Its main characteristic is that it is very transmissible, we did not expect a variant with this devastating transmission potential”, he says.
In this sense, current projections are that Brazil faces a setback in the health situation, with an increase in cases and deaths due to Ômicron.
“It’s hard to believe that we only had one death from Ômicron in Brazil. Data on the number of cases, testing, hospitalization and deaths are very out of date. Those who are doctors, see patients, already saw the increase in cases long before the Ministry of Health bulletins, and it is very bad not to have this data because it gives the impression that things are flowing in a more lenient way”, he says.
According to the infectious disease specialist, at the moment, those who are not immunized or with incomplete immunization represent the largest number of people who are hospitalized in hospitals. UTIs, requiring oxygen.
In general, the largest number of people has been concentrated in the emergency rooms, and the current recommendation is that they should be sought only if symptoms persist or worsen, as vaccinated people generally have a milder condition.
“We have generally seen patients in a preserved state, very different from what we saw in the previous waves of Covid-19, when patients were already serious, with shortness of breath, needing to be put on oxygen, needing to be forwarded to the ICU” , it says.
In this scenario, people with comorbidities, unvaccinated or incompletely immunized are the most threatened by Covid-19.
“When you start to have a lot of cases, even of the Ômicron variant, you start to have more severe cases, of course in a smaller proportion than we saw in the first waves, but it starts to worry us because patients start to appear who need to be hospitalized”.
AT CNN, Costa also spoke about the difficulty of planning due to the lack of data at the federal level, the need to guide the population on carrying out autotestes and the impossibility of creating “safe protocols” for the Carnival given the current scenario.
“Here in São Paulo, we are already preparing to not be taken by surprise, as happened before, when there was a lack of beds, of oxygen. It is very unlikely that we will arrive at these times, but there is already concern about increases in hospitalization”, he says.
Check out guidelines from the Ministry of Health in the face of the diagnosis of Covid-19
Reference: CNN Brasil
