Zema says it is "unlikely" that Minas Gerais will experience a second wave of Covid-19.
In an interview with CNN, the governor of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema, says that a second wave of COVID-19 in the state is unlikely.
247 - Without any scientific basis, the governor of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema, said he believes it is unlikely that there will be a second wave of Covid-19 in the state.
“Today, we have around 68% of the SUS ICU beds occupied. Even if we have a resurgence, which I think is unlikely, but it could happen, we still have a good safety cushion here. We have 32% of the ICU beds vacant, remembering that some regions in the state have lower occupied capacity and others have higher occupancy,” Zema said in an interview with CNN Brasil this Monday (3).
Despite the fact that Covid cases have plateaued, meaning the number of deaths has neither decreased nor increased, the governor says that the situation regarding the disease in Minas Gerais is calmer than in other states.
"We had an explosion in some cities in Minas Gerais. Overall, if you look at our curve, you'll see that it doesn't even compare to the curve for Brazil. Our curve remained at a minimum slope for almost the entire time. The curve for Brazil and many states had a very steep slope. Today, we have the central region and the metropolitan region here that have the most critical situation in the state, but it's far from being a situation where the health system will collapse," he stated.
He also said that the coordination between the federal government and the states has improved. "I would say that as the pandemic progressed, I think all the states and also the federal government have become better structured," he said, on the day the country recorded 94.702 deaths and 2.751.665 diagnoses of Covid-19.
Zema attributes this "improvement" to receiving ventilators and tests from the federal government. "As I said, in the beginning there may have been a lack of greater synchronization, but then things went well. I may be wrong, but in my opinion, in a year, when we do a retrospective, we will see that Brazil, within the global context, did not do as bad a job as many have claimed," he argued.
When asked if more than 95 deaths was a number for a country that had done a good job, Zema stated: “I am speaking in comparative terms. We have to consider that Brazil has more than 200 million inhabitants. We have a country like Italy with 60 million inhabitants that had almost half that number of deaths. I deeply regret this number, but we have to remember that we are a gigantic country.”