Key events
***NEW***
On April 7, the country had 13.717 confirmed cases and 667 deaths, according do the MoH.
Brazil confirmed its first case and the first in Latin America on February 27th. The 61 years old man came from Italy.
The country has registered its first death due to coronavirus infection on March 17.
Source: CIDACS/Fiocruz
There are confirmed cases in all South and Central American countries.
Deaths: all over the region except for some Caribbean islands
Source: Johns Hopkins
On January 22, the Brazilian MoH established an Emergency Operations Center (COE-COVID-19) in order to prepare the public health system to assist possible cases, coordinate actions and give a timely response. The COE is composed of renowned health institutions such as Fiocruz, Anvisa (the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO).
Fiocruz has been working with respiratory syndromes for over 60 years and has many specialized bodies to subsidize the institutional response do the virus. The Oswaldo Cruz Institute's Laboratory for Respiratory Viruses and Measles (IOC/Fiocruz) is directly involved in the Brazilian response to the COVID-19. Fiocruz has also two national reference institutes to assist patients: the National Institute of Women, Children and Adolescents' Health Fernandes Figueira (IFF/Fiocruz) and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases Evandro Chagas (INI/Fiocruz).
Its institutional capacity accredits Fiocruz to support the national response by training health professionals, offering courses and assisting the production and update of clinical practice guidelines.
Additionally, Fiocruz has a Situation Room set up to follow the COVID-19 situation in the country. It gathers specialized personnel such as researchers, managers and technicians as well as representatives from the state and municipal governments.
The Foundation is also offering, in collaboration with PAHO/WHO, training on laboratory testing and diagnostic for the new virus. Nine countries participated in this training, which finished on February 7, and will be able to take this technology to their home countries and disseminate it to their peers.
On the 30th, the government declared a Public Health Emergency of National Concern as an administrative measure. This was necessary to put the operation to bring Brazilian citizens from Wuhan in place. The government sent a mission to repatriate 34 Brazilian citizens, who arrived on February 9 and will remain in quarantine for 18 days in a military base.
The MoH announced the first COVID-19 diagnosis on February 26. The man is a 61 year old man who came from Italy. The Ministry is now investigating people who had contact with him before the diagnosis.
Fiocruz is distributing test kits for all regions in Brazil and is also working to decentralize COVID-19 diagnosis by training all State Laboratories. Its Institute of Technology in Immunobiologicals [Bio-Manguinhos] is the responsible for producing diagnosis test kits and ordered in March supplies for over 1 million units.
The institution is also developing new diagnosis kits to test multiple viruses at the same time, accelerating differential diagnosis.
Additionally, Fiocruz is building a 200-bed hospital for intensive and semi-intensive care, the Fiocruz Hospital Center for the COVID-19 Pandemic. This unit will serve as one of the settings for the WHO Solidarity clinical trial, launched on March 20. The Foundation will coordinate the initiative in Brazil in 18 hospitals in 12 states of the country.
On March, Fiocruz worked in two important communication tools. The “Watch out for corona” campaign, which is a joint effort with civil society organizations to inform vulnerable populations on prevention; and the Tele-coronavirus, which will offer telephone assistance by medical students in the 5th and 6th years for remote screening of people with symptoms of Covid-19 in the state of Bahia.
For Fiocruz public health physician, Valcler Rangel, this is a time bomb that needs to be disarmed immediately. He defends equality in the prevention and control measures for the coronavirus, treating in a different way people and places that are ... Read more
Fiocruz is the reference institution in Brazil for testing 2019-nCoV and has been working closely with the Ministry of Health to ensure timely and reliable diagnostic and response. Read more
Starting this week, Brazil will gain a weight boost in the national response to a possible introduction of the 2019-nCoV in the country. Together with PAHO/WHO, specialists from the Laboratory of Respiratory And Measles Virus of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, ... Read more
Fiocruz takes part on a meeting of hundreds of scientists from all over the world at the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO), in Geneva, on February 11 and 12, to discuss how research can be used to intensify ... Read more
Interview with Carlos Morel, former president of Fiocruz and general coordinator of the Center for Technological Development in Health. Read more
The global spread of the 2019-nCoV is continuing and is fast moving, as indicated by the WHO raising the risk assessment to high. In this article, we provide a preliminary ...
Resources
|
@Fiocruz
@MoH
@Other Sources |
