Severe acute respiratory syndrome cases are up 135% in Brazil, says Fiocruz

The reported cases of Srag (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in Brazil had a jump of 135%, when compared to the last three weeks of November and the three most recent weeks.

The data are from Fiocruz’s Infogripe bulletin, which had not been released for over a month because of the Covid-19 data blackout in the country. The publication has been one of the main thermometers of the evolution of the coronavirus epidemic in Brazil.

With the high, the number of cases went from 5,600 to 13,000 in the period. According to Fiocruz, in 2022 alone, 6,849 cases of Srag were reported, of which 1,735 (25.3%) were positive for some respiratory virus and 1,798 (26.3%) were negative. There are at least another 2,667 (38.9%) cases awaiting laboratory results.

The bulletin notes that there was a significant increase in cases associated with the flu virus at the end of November and throughout December of last year, even surpassing records of Covid-19. The picture, however, has already been reversed.

“The data for the end of December and the first week of January already point to the resumption of the scenario of predominance of Covid-19”, says the document. According to Fiocruz, practically all states showed signs of growth even before Christmas and New Year’s weeks.

At the beginning of December last year, Fiocruz had already alerted to the fact that hospitalizations for respiratory syndrome in Brazil have returned to grow after a period of stability.

“The scenario of an increase in serious cases, both of influenza and of Covid-19, before the holiday season suggests that such events may have represented a significant risk for the population, especially in events with many people”, says the institution.

According to the coordinator of Infogripe, Marcelo Gomes, maintaining the dissemination of data during the festive period “would have given better conditions for the population to make appropriate decisions at the epidemiological moment”.

The blackout of official data on Covid-19 completed a month this week, and Brazil remains unaware of the real size of the new wave of contamination caused by the omicron variant.

The researchers say that the data serve as a warning for the resumption of actions to raise awareness of the population and to minimize the impact of the disease in early 2022.

They also point out that the data from the bulletin must be cross-referenced with other relevant indicators — such as the occupancy rate of beds in hospitals, for example.

With the advancement of vaccine coverage in the adult population and the decline in immunity among those who received the immunizer for a longer time, the age groups of 60 years and over are once again the groups with the highest weekly incidence of cases and deaths from Srag diagnosed with Covid-19.

The high number of reported cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome is observed in 25 of the 27 federative units, and also in all age groups from ten years old.

The publication states that, among those aged between ten and 19 years, it is possible that the volume of diagnoses has already reached values ​​similar to those recorded at the peaks of March and May 2021, when there was the second wave of the epidemic in the country.

“Such a scenario is not observed in the range from zero to nine years, which at the end of December presents an interruption of growth that has been maintained since October 2021”, says Fiocruz.