Brazil lacks coronavirus tests, other equipment, report says

Brazilian health officials grappling with the new coronavirus outbreak have issued a stark warning about a lack of hospital beds, masks, testing devices and trained staff across Latin America’s largest nation.

A Health Ministry report says Brazil can currently carry out 6,700 COVID-19 tests a day, but that it will need to process as many as 30,000–50,000 tests daily during the peak of the outbreak, expected in June.

This latest assessment of the public healthcare system raises serious questions about its capacity to face the outbreak in a country of nearly 210 million. It also calls for the maintenance of quarantine measures in states that are most badly hit, challenging President Jair Bolsonaro’s more laid-back approach to the virus.

Bolsonaro has compared the new coronavirus to a “little flu” and publicly attacked governors that introduced quarantine measures, such as in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, two of the country’s biggest clusters.

As of this afternoon, the health ministry had reported 10,278 confirmed cases and 431 deaths. But the outbreak is still in its early phase, the report said, and the country’s hospitals are not ready to handle a peak.

— AP