Brazil’s neighbours build ‘epidemiological barrier’ to guard against out of control virus

Brazil's health care system is at the brink of collapse

Credit: Jonne Roriz /Bloomberg 

Brazil’s neighbours are moving to form an ‘epidemiological blockade’ to prevent the staggering surge in coronavirus cases bleeding into the rest of the continent and threatening fledgling vaccination campaigns.

Uruguay said it would dispatch what remained of the small country’s vaccine stash to the cities that border Brazil, in an effort to “seal off” the country from the new strain.

Colombia has also been shoring up a blockade with a vaccination campaign for anyone over 18 in the Colombian Amazonian belt that borders Brazil. It announced last week that it had administered more than 22,000 vaccines so far.

“We are under threat by the epidemiological situation in Brazil,” Uruguay’s Health Minister Daniel Salinas said

Argentina, Peru and Chile have also taken steps to guard against the more contagious P1 variant, that is believed to have originated in the city of Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon.

Coronavirus Brazil Spotlight Chart — Cases default

Brazil, the largest country by far in Latin America, with 221-million people, has now recorded more than 11.7-million cases over the duration of the pandemic, and more than 285,000 deaths, second only to the United States.  

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has regularly downplayed the virus, dismissing it as no worse than "the sniffles".

But on one day this week the Brazilian health ministry reported more than 90,000 new positive cases, a new daily record for the country, and 2,648 deaths.

The health care system is at the brink: 24 out of 26 states and the federal district that encompases the capital of Brasilia have ICU bed occupancy at or above 80 per cent. Fifteen are at or over 90 per cent, Fiocruz, a public health research institute based in Rio de Janeiro, reported this week.

“This is the biggest sanitary and hospital collapse in the history of Brazil,” the researchers wrote on Tuesday.

Neighbouring countries have been nervously watching it unfold for months, as cases start to climb within their own borders.

Peru, which shares 2,800 kilometres of border with Brazil, suspended flights and closed its border to Brazil in January.

The virus has been regularly downplayed in Brazil

Credit: RICARDO MORAES /REUTERS

Colombia’s borders will remain closed — except for certain purposes — until at least June 1. It also suspended flights to and from Brazil in January, and banned flights to Leticia, the Colombian border city in the Amazon. 

Chile is sending anyone arriving from Brazil to a mandatory isolation facilities, where they must carry out the quarantine if a test finds them Covid positive.  

Argentina has resisted calls to close its borders entirely — travel is restricted for foreigners, but Agentines can move across borders. On Saturday, it reduced the number of flights from a number of Latin American countries, including Brazil, and the United States.

The government is facing internal pressure to do more. More than fifty academics and noted Argentine figures issued an open letter calling on the government to shut the border.

“At a time when we have vaccinated only a minority of the at risk populations and we observe an inexplicable flow of tourism with Brazil, we believe that the adoption of measures that try to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in our country is urgently required,” an open letter stated.