The Economist - USA (2020-03-28)

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TheEconomistMarch 28th 2020 29

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T


he firstperson to die from covid-19 in
the state of Rio de Janeiro was a 63-year-
old maid who commuted each week to a
beachside apartment in Leblon, the prici-
est neighbourhood in Brazil. Her employer
had recently returned from Italy. The maid,
who had diabetes and high blood pressure,
died on March 17th in a city 100km (60
miles) away, where she and five relatives
shared a cinder-block house. Several hos-
pital workers there have since fallen ill. 
If the virus in Italy jumps between gen-
erations living together, in Brazil it started
by hopping between classes, which are so-
cially distant but physically close. One vec-
tor may be the populist president, Jair Bol-
sonaro. On March 15th, after his
communications secretary tested positive
for the virus, he ignored quarantine orders
and took selfies with fans. When the first
Brazilian died of covid-19 on the next day,
he denounced “hysteria” about the virus.
Other leaders are less complacent. Vot-
ing remotely for the first time, congress-
men proclaimed a “state of calamity”,


which lets the government breach consti-
tutional spending limits. Rodrigo Maia, the
president of the lower house, wants to
spend at least 400bn reais ($80bn, or 4% of
gdp) to help the health system and the
economy. The health minister, Luiz Hen-
rique Mandetta, is not an ideologue, unlike
many of his cabinet colleagues. City and
state governments are imposing isolation
measures—São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro
have full lockdowns—and turning football
stadiums into hospitals. Universities and
private labs are developing covid-19 tests.
Companies are donating materials for their
production. Brazil’s biggest brewery is
making hand sanitiser. 
But workers against the disease must
block out signals from a president who
continues to disparage their efforts. On

March 25th he told Mr Mandetta to stop
calling for large-scale social distancing. In
a televised speech on March 24th, he urged
local governments to abandon “scorched-
earth” strategies of closing schools and
shops, and blasted the media for spreading
“the sensation of fear”.
As The Economistwent to press, Brazil
had 59 covid-19 deaths and 2,554 confirmed
cases. But testing has mostly been limited
to patients in hospital. The true number is
probably much higher. Piecemeal respons-
es by governments and the private sector
will not fend off disaster. Warm climates
like Brazil’s may slow transmission of the
virus, says a new study from the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology. Otherwise
“there are no mitigating factors,” says Pau-
lo Chapchap of the Sírio-Libanês hospital
in São Paulo. Private hospitals like his are
strained, because current patients tend to
be rich folk who caught the disease abroad,
or their intimates. As it migrates to the
masses it could quickly overwhelm the
public health system, which serves four-
fifths of the population.
Brazil’s universal health-care system
serves more people than any other totally
free system in the world, but the country
spends just 3.8% of gdpon it. Italy spends
6.7% of gdp; Germany, 9.4%. Brazil’s public
system has just seven acute-care hospital
beds per 100,000 people, nearly all of
which are occupied by non-covid patients.
Demand for acute-care beds in some cities

Covid-19 in Brazil


BolsoNero


SÃO PAULO
Brazil’s president fiddles as a pandemic looms


The Americas


30 TheMexican-Americanbordercloses
32 Bello: The Latin American patient

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