Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2020; 114(6): 988-991
Covid-19 in Brazil: Learning How to Walk in the Dark Without Leaving Anything Behind
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had its first case in Brazil on February 4, 2020 in the state of São Paulo. Like a real meteor, it practically paralyzed the planet without a more effective therapeutic approach to fight the virus, in addition to practices adopted worldwide only decades or even hundreds of years ago, with a very low level of robust modern evidence. Brazil had the advantage of previewing the pandemic as it was a few weeks behind its Asian and European peers, so it was able to identify the hits and failures of these countries in their preparation to face the problem.
We have then found out by chance that we have the world’s third biggest number of ICU beds, second only to the USA and Germany, but we are also faced with an enormous heterogeneity between states, limitations and bureaucracy for the purchase of personal protective equipment and testing kits. This has prevented some pandemic approaches taken by other countries from being adopted here, either due to the impossibility of a lockdown in a continental country, or due to the speed and costs to identify the cases of transmission. Besides, limitations on the number of tests to be done has left us without a precise guide as to the spread of the pandemic, making it difficult to plan the timely, orderly and efficient allocation of scarce resources.
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