Brazil health minister underscores importance of 2nd shot

The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic led Brazil’s national network of public hospitals, the SUS, to take both quantitative and qualitative leaps, said the country’s Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga on radio broadcast A Voz do Brasil, on air tonight (Dec. 23).

ICU beds before the pandemic numbered approximately 23 thousand, he pointed out. Now, they add up to 40 thousand. The big challenge, he went on, was the vaccination campaign. “The scarcity of doses gave way to one of the world’s most successful campaigns against COVID-19,” he said.

The minister ascribed the reduction in case and death tallies to the success of the campaign. “In six months, we witnessed a 90 percent reduction in the number of cases and 90 percent in deaths.” Queiroga also noted that the moving average of deaths now stands at around 130 cases. Back at the peak of the pandemic, this rate reached 4 thousand. The result, he argued, was made possible due to a strategy being developed since 2020.

The health minister explained to the over 20 million Brazilians who have not completed their full vaccination cycle that immunization is only achieved after the second dose, adding that the ministry has been providing booster doses. With the booster shot, he said, those who received the jab over five months prior have their response capacity increased in the case of an infection with a variant, or of a new spike in cases, thus preventing an increase in the number of hospitalizations and fatalities.

During the interview, the minister also discussed the fight against heart disease, primary care, and the work being done in indigenous communities.