New York Times. Brazil is having a bad day.

Brazil on the brink

Brazil is in a terrifying spot in the pandemic. The more contagious P.1 variant first discovered there has pushed cases to record highs in recent weeks and overwhelmed hospitals. The country’s daily average death toll is now the highest in the world.

To understand more, I spoke to Ernesto Londoño, The Times’s Brazil bureau chief.

What’s the virus situation?

Things are not going well. The severity of the crisis and the rate of contagion and the death toll this year have really been staggering. It seems to have caught virtually everybody by surprise.

The breakdown of the health care system has also been really stunning. Brazil has a universal health care system that has pretty broad capabilities. So to see a situation where people have died for lack of oxygen, or where hospitals run out of equipment or the drugs they need to sedate patients before intubating them — it’s really surprising. The medical corps is also just exhausted and they can’t believe they’re having to work at this pace a year into this crisis.