Brazil has become South America’s superspreader event by Lucien Chauvin, Anthony Faiola and Terrence McCoy published by The Washington Post (5/2021).
“LIMA, Peru — With a sense of dread, the doctor watched the patients stream into his intensive care unit.
For weeks, César Salomé, a physician in Lima’s Hospital Mongrut, had followed the chilling reports. A new coronavirus variant, spawned in the Amazon rainforest, had stormed Brazil and driven its health system to the brink of collapse. Now his patients, too, were arriving far sicker, their lungs saturated with disease, and they were dying within days. Even the young and healthy didn’t appear protected.
The new variant, he realized, was here.
“We used to have more time,” Salomé said. “Now, we have patients who come in and in a few days they’ve lost the use of their lungs.”
The P.1 variant, which packs a suite of mutations that make it more transmissible and potentially more dangerous, is no longer just Brazil’s problem. It’s South America’s problem — and the world’s…”
