As Testing Falters, Brazil Becoming a Coronavirus Hot Spot

(RIO DE JANEIRO) — Cases of the new coronavirus are overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Brazil as Latin America’s largest nation veers closer to becoming one of the world’s pandemic hot spots. Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and at least four other major cities have warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse, or already too overwhelmed to take any more patients. Health experts expect the number of infections in the country of 211 million people will be much higher than what has been reported because of insufficient, delayed testing. Meanwhile, President Jair Bolsonaro has shown no sign of wavering from his insistence that COVID-19 is a relatively minor disease and that broad social-distancing measures are not needed to stop it. He has said only Brazilians at high risk should be isolated. Read more: Brazil’s President Still Insists the Coronavirus Is Overblown. These Governors Are Fighting Back In Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon, officials said a cemetery has been forced to dig mass graves because there have been so many deaths. Workers have been burying 100 corpses a day — triple the pre-virus average of burials. Emerson Cardoso—APA backhoe buries coffins in a common pit at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Brazil on April 22, 2020. Ytalo Rodrigues, a 20-year-old driver for a funerary service provider in Manaus, said he had retrieved one body after another for more than 36 h...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized brazil COVID-19 News Desk wire Source Type: news