[ti:Brazil Records 4,000 Daily COVID Deaths for First Time]
[by:www.21voa.com]
[00:00.00]更多听力请访问21VOA.COM
[00:00.04]Brazil reported more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths in one day
[00:05.72]for the first time this week.
[00:09.04]As the death tolls rise, experts fear that the South American country
[00:14.28]could pass the United States death total
[00:17.28]from the coronavirus pandemic later this year.
[00:21.88]The total number of deaths recorded by Brazil's health ministry
[00:26.04]is close to 400,000.
[00:29.80]The U.S. is the only country with more deaths,
[00:33.56]at about 555,000.
[00:37.36]Brazil has two-thirds of the U.S. population.
[00:43.20]From the start of the health crisis, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro
[00:47.96]has resisted measures to prevent the spread of the virus
[00:51.76]like wearing cloth coverings and social distancing.
[00:57.00]He once called the coronavirus a "small flu."
[01:02.56]The country's governors and mayors are reopening parts of the economy
[01:07.76]while the healthcare system is at risk of collapsing.
[01:12.52]Hospitals are overcrowded.
[01:15.80]COVID-19 patients are using more than 90 percent of hospital beds
[01:21.28]in intensive care units for the sickest patients.
[01:26.36]Adding to the problem, Brazil also has many different COVID variants.
[01:33.16]And this week, a judge ruled that schools could reopen in Rio de Janeiro.
[01:40.88]Brazilian officials, however, are claiming life will be back to normal soon.
[01:47.56]"We think that probably two, three months from now
[01:51.44]Brazil could be back to business," said Economy Minister Paulo Guedes.
[01:57.76]Miguel Lago is the director for the Institute for Health Policy Studies in Brazil.
[02:04.96]He said reopening is a mistake that would bring even higher death numbers.
[02:11.84]He also said local political leaders fear the president's supporters
[02:16.88]will try to stop any policies like social distancing from going into effect.
[02:24.08]"The fact is," Lago said,
[02:26.28]"the anti-lockdown narrative of President Jair Bolsonaro has won."
[02:32.40]While the U.S. is working to make vaccines available to all adults by April 19,
[02:38.88]Brazil has been slow to vaccinate its people.
[02:43.60]Our World in Data, an online research site,
[02:47.88]says just 3 percent of the Brazilian population has been fully vaccinated.
[02:54.40]Miguel Nicolelis is a Brazilian doctor and professor at Duke University.
[03:00.92]He compared the situation in Brazil to Japan's nuclear disaster.
[03:07.12]"It's a biological Fukushima," he said.
[03:11.04]Both Nicolelis and Christovam Barcellos,
[03:14.32]a researcher at Brazilian medical institute Fiocruz,
[03:18.12]are warning that Brazil will soon pass the U.S. in total and daily death numbers.
[03:25.96]The respected Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington
[03:31.84]created a model to predict COVID deaths in Brazil through June.
[03:37.64]It says Brazil may even break the U.S. seven-day average
[03:42.20]for COVID-19 deaths as soon as next week.
[03:47.28]The model also predicts Brazil to have 563,000 deaths by the start of the summer.
[03:54.76]By then, the U.S. is expected to record 600,000 deaths from the virus.
[04:02.80]I'm Jonathan Evans. 更多听力请访问21VOA.COM