Brazil's health-care workers overwhelmed as country reaches its highest COVID-19 death toll yet

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As Brazil faced its deadliest day on Tuesday due to COVID-19, President Jair Bolsonaro claimed that very soon, citizens would be able to get back to their "normal lives." 

But Fábio Biolchini, an emergency co-ordinator for Doctors Without Borders (DWB) in the country, says the situation is "completely out of control."

After a year with the virus and a president who opposed containment measures such as lockdowns, Brazil is one of the worst-hit countries in the world, with more than 300,000 people now dead from the virus.

"I think most [about] the health workers," Biolchini told As It Happens host Carol Off. 

"They are just all the time inside the hospital, dealing with patients. But for sure, it is frustrating to them to see these speeches that affect society and behaviour. It will only increase their workload and the [number] of patients inside the hospitals."

Bolsonaro's speech was greeted with protest. People cried out with rage and frustration, banging pots and pans in some of Brazil's biggest cities. 

Bolsonaro tells Brazilians to 'stop whining' as COVID-19 death toll rises

4 years ago

Duration 2:04

Brazil has entered the deadliest phase of the pandemic so far, with the daily death toll exceeding 2,000 on some days this past week. But the government is still downplaying the disaster, and President Jair Bolsonaro has told people to 'stop whining.'

DWB says its response to COVID-19 has been the organization's largest effort in Brazil since it began providing medical services there in 1991. Hundreds of its staffers have returned to Brazil to either treat or help support patients with COVID-19.

"It's not easy to see, especially as being also a Brazilian. It's my own population," Biolchini said.

"Seeing people in these conditions — corpses that are piled up at the entrance of hospitals because they just don't have a place anymore in the morgue — that's quite shocking."

Hospitals in need of help

Biolchini is currently posted in Porto Velho, the capital of the northern state Rondonia, where he's watching the crisis closely.

The medical co-ordinator says he sees many hospitals that are overcrowded. When there are no beds available for patients within a hospital, clinics and emergency rooms admit them. They are not equipped to do so, but he says they are just trying to cope with the soaring numbers of patients.

At the same time, there are more than 100 people wait-listed for an ICU bed, he said.

For health-care workers, the work never ends.

"They are working sometimes 48-hour shifts ... 72-hour straight shifts. They are literally collapsing. And that's been the case for months now," Biolchini said. 

DWB also runs a mental-health support program in Rondonia for health-care workers who are reportedly suffering from burnout and suicidal thoughts. 

"In addition to the workload, there is also this frustration that they are doing the best that they can, but nobody else is helping them. Nobody else is trying to do their part of the job to prevent things [from] getting worse."

A lack of leadership

Since the start of the pandemic, President Bolsonaro has underestimated how the virus would affect his people and society.

On March 24, 2020, when Brazil's death toll stood at 46, Bolsonaro said he "wouldn't need to worry" if he was infected by the virus because of his background as an athlete.

Bolsonaro went on to oppose lockdowns. Then his office was accused of attempting to suppress infection numbers and the death toll. And now critics are accusing him of undermining vaccination efforts after he failed to secure enough vaccines for the country and vowed not to get the vaccine himself.

"There is an ongoing vaccination, but it's really slow," Biolchini said.  "Around three to four per cent of the population of this state, [Rondonia], has been vaccinated, which is clearly not enough to achieve herd immunity."

While the president did not recommend citizens get their COVID-19 vaccine, he did support the use of drugs like chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

"So many people would take those drugs even if they don't have symptoms," Biolchini said.

"They have the illusion that they are protected against COVID, which is clearly a mistake. We have seen it here in Rondonia."

Struggling to move forward

Biolchini says he thinks it's been hard for Brazilians to stay at home without any financial support, which is why they continue to go to work and risk catching the virus.

"It's a choice between starve to death, or get COVID," he said.

At the same time, he says each state in Brazil is making their own decisions as to how to contain the virus.

"We have a very quick response in terms of centralized decision-making in the Ministry of Health, [but] we have a communication that is not well-established.... In some cities, [people] are still out there just going around as [if] nothing was happening," he said. 

"It's really, really complicated."

Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview with Fábio Biolchini produced by Matt Meuse.