Sao Paulo state: No Covid-19 deaths for 1st time since pandemic started
Sao Paulo, Nov 8 (EFE).- Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, the country’s most populous region and the one hardest hit by the coronavirus, registered no Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours for the first time since the start of the pandemic, officials said on Monday.
“The state of Sao Paulo did not register any deaths from Covid-19 on Monday,” said the regional government in its latest pandemic announcement.
Sao Paulo, which has about 46 million residents, equivalent to the populations of countries like Argentina or Spain, so far has tallied 4,413,241 positive Covid-19 test results and 152,527 deaths associated with the coronavirus.
Over the past 24 hours, the state registered 359 new coronavirus cases, according to official figures.
Up until Monday, the region had experienced Covid deaths every day since March 12, 2020, when the first death linked to the virus was registered in the South American giant.
Sao Paulo authorities said in a statement that, although on Monday the figures were below the weekly average, this is the first time that not a single death was reported during any 24-hour period since the pandemic hit.
On the other hand, authorities added that there are still 3,011 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the state, of whom 1,375 are being treated in intensive care units.
That means that the ICU occupancy rate on Monday stands at 24.5 percent, a completely different scenario from the one in March and April, when the Brazilian healthcare system was on the verge of collapse in the middle of the pandemic’s second wave.
However, the rate of infections and deaths caused by Covid-19 has been gradually diminishing since June all over Brazil, including in Sao Paulo state.
Experts attribute this improvement to the success of the vaccination campaign, which was launched on Jan. 17, 2021, and which has resulted in 73 percent of the Brazilian population having received at least one dose of one of the available vaccines and 56 percent being fully immunized.
In addition, many of the country’s states are already administering booster doses to health professionals and the elderly to provide them with further protection.
Brazil is one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic along with the United States and India, with about 610,000 deaths and 22 million infections since the first case was detected in Sao Paulo on Feb. 26, 2020.
EFE cms/ag/dmt/bp
