- This hospital is in the front lines
of Brazil's fight against the new wave of COVID-19,
one that's marked by the new variant, P.1,
which is more aggressive
than the traditional coronavirus.
The patient behind me is 22 years old.
That's a new characteristic of COVID-19.
Here in Porto Alegre,
more and more young adults
are coming to the ICU for treatment.
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(speaking in foreign language)
(machine beeping)
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- We don't have enough space,
we don't have enough people,
we don't have enough equipment,
so this is very frustrating for us.
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- We believe this is the consequence
of the relaxation of the mitigation strategies
of social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing
and the basic measures that we all learned.
(machines beeping)
- This room here has nine patients,
all of them in ICU.
But there isn't a lot of ICUs in town
to take everybody in.
So they stayed here waiting for a spot to open somewhere.
Those patients here,
they have been improvised in these semi-beds.
And they're hooked up to oxygen
but the hooks that are supposed to feed one patient
are feeding two or more.
Here on the other side,
you can see there are more people in the same situation
and the nurses and doctors here,
they're doing their best to keep them safe
and treat them.
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(speaking in foreign language)
(machines beeping)
- So now we have more people in their 30s and 40s,
working age people,
who spent several days here
but the staff tells me
that the rate of death is going up
and this special new variant, P.1,
they tend to deteriorate very fast.
- This is extremely difficult for us.
Many patients came to the ICU severely ill.
Young patients dying.
It's not uncommon to see parents
and kids hospitalized at the same time.
Dying one after the other.
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(speaking in foreign language)
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- The situation's getting worse.
The system is above capacity
and the doctors, they estimate that the situation
won't improve for the next several weeks.
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