South American hospitals are struggling to cope with the omicron variant as employees fall sick. A major hospital in Bolivia’s largest city has stopped admitting new patients, and 15% of Argentina's health workers are estimated to have the virus.
But the omicron variant is defying vaccines, sending case numbers surging. Argentina saw an average 112,000 daily confirmed cases in the week through Jan. 16, up from 3,700 a month earlier. Brazil’s health ministry is still recovering from a hack that left coronavirus data incomplete; even so, it shows a jump to an average 69,000 daily cases in the same seven-day period, up 1,900% from the month before.
Lesser severity leaves South America’s residents loath to give up their long-awaited summer that, so they were told, would mark a return to normality after full vaccination. The enduring pandemic often seems an afterthought to people who are out and about, and don’t glimpse how omicron has started affecting medical staff. Beaches were packed this weekend in Argentina and Brazil.
Brazil’s council of state health secretariats estimates that between 10% and 20% of all professionals in the health network — including doctors, nurses, nurse technicians, ambulance drivers and others in direct contact with patients — have taken sick leave since the last week of 2021.The press office of Rio de Janeiro state’s health secretariat told the AP that about 5,500 professionals have left their jobs since December.
Public hospitals in Bolivia are operating at 50-70% capacity due to the high number of infections among health care workers, according to the Bolivian doctors’ union. In Santa Cruz, the country’s most populous city, the Children’s Hospital is overwhelmed — but less by its number of patients than the amount of staff falling ill, according to Freddy Rojas, its vice director. Last week, the facility stopped admitting new patients.
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