In one week, Brazil more than doubled the moving average of Covid-19 cases registered in the country. According to Conass data, last Sunday (16), the average was 68,107, while on the previous Sunday the figure was 32,954.
On the day that the country completes one year since the beginning of the vaccination against Covid, the doctor and neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis said, in an interview with CNN, that “we are in an ambiguous situation: we have a vaccination that has progressed, but that needs to progress further (…), at the same time that we are racing against time to avoid the new health collapse due to the explosion of cases of the Ômicron variant“.
According to the specialist, although “the best news of 2021 was vaccination”, Brazil did not know how to take advantage of the period of low transmission rate to prepare for the arrival of the Ômicron variant.
Now, according to Nicolelis, “we are in the ascending phase of a third wave”.
Even with the high number of cases, the doctor still stated that we have a lack of data. “We know that underreporting is very high, because tests in Brazil and reliable data are lacking. We have been suffering for more than a month with partial data that are difficult to predict”, he said.
Regarding the use of masks, the specialist warned of the difficulty of convincing the population of places where the use of the equipment had been made more flexible to use them again.
“We have to wear a mask everywhere. And it’s not just any mask, we have to use, at the very least, surgical masks or masks that provide protection above 90%”, explained Nicolelis.
* Under supervision of Rafaela Lara
Reference: CNN Brasil
