Brazil reported its first death of a patient with omicron variant

Brazil reported this Thursday its first fatal victim by omicron, an elderly man living in a municipality in the center of the country who, despite having three doses of the vaccine, failed to defeat the new variant of covid-19, official sources reported this Wednesday. .

The 68-year-old man, who may also be the first victim of the new variant of the coronavirus in Latin America, since so far no other country has reported data on deaths by omicron, died in Aparecida de Goiania, a municipality in the state of Goiás, in central Brazil, where the new variant is already responsible for 93.5% of the cases.

According to the mayor of the municipality, the victim had received the two regulatory doses of the vaccination schedule and a third booster, but suffered from various comorbidities, such as high blood pressure and chronic lung disease.

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According to the health authorities, to date there are already 55 cases of omicron reported in Aparecida de Goiania, where transmission by omicron is already recognized as community, that is, among people who have not had contact with infected abroad.

“We lost a vaccinated patient who had chronic health problems, which are major risk factors for COVID-19. Unfortunately, he did not resist. One life lost among thousands saved by immunization, ”said the municipality’s health secretary, Alessandro Magalhaes.

The confirmation of the first death by the omicron in Brazil occurs ten days after the community transmission in the city was declared.

Despite the fact that vaccination helps in most cases to prevent the worsening of cases, to avoid hospitalizations and to reduce the risk of death from the disease and its variants, experts have repeatedly pointed out that immunization against covid-19 does not guarantees the contagion or recontagion of the virus.

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With almost 620,000 fatalities and some 22.3 million infections, Brazil is the second country with the highest number of deaths from the virus, after the United States, and the third in number of positives, behind the North American country and India.

So far, the South American giant accumulates 265 cases confirmed by the new variant and 520 more in the analysis phase, according to figures from the Ministry of Health, which are considered outdated because studies indicate that 92.6% of the positives by Covid-19 analyzed in the country are caused by the omicron. (I)