Living with Covid in Brazil
Parke native Matthew Hande, now living in Recife, Brazil, speaks about the effect the Covid-19 pandemic has taken on the country
EVERYBODY is asking "when are things going to return to normal?" At this stage I think we don’t even know what is normal anymore.
At least here in Brazil, normal now means wearing a mask every time you put your foot outside the door, getting your temperature taken every time you enter a shop, getting your hands plastered with alcohol, keeping a safe distance from everybody, taking off your shoes as soon as you enter the house and of course washing your hands many times a during the day, etc. And we’ve been doing that for at least a year.
Life has changed a great deal since 2020 arrived. We didn’t know how lucky we were back in 2019. Both my wife and myself retired at the end of 2019 and we had great plans for 2020. We were going to visit her parents and some friends of ours in São Paulo, we were going to England for the birth of our granddaughter in June and then heading for Ireland.
We even had bought our tickets but unfortunately we didn’t manage to go anywhere as all our flights were cancelled and to make matters worse now we have no idea when we can travel because flights have been cancelled again this year. There is no doubt that Covid-19 has put an end to the plans of everybody and at the moment we are just thanking God that we are alive and healthy.
Here in Brazil the situation is very bad. I might even say critical. At the moment here in Recife, we have a partial lockdown. Stores, shopping malls, restaurants, bars, parks and beaches are closed and people have been asked to stay home if at all possible. It’s hard to be living in a seaside town and not be able to go to the beach, especially when the sun shines all the year round.
My daughter Patricia, who is a doctor, used to live with us, but at the start of the pandemic she decided to move out as she was afraid of putting us in danger. She herself got Covid-19 twice. First she got it in May and then got reinfected at the beginning of this year. Luckily, both times weren't too severe.
The problem was we couldn’t even visit her because of the danger of us getting infected. However, we were able to keep in contact thanks to the mobile phone and WhatsApp. At least now she has got vaccinated, both jabs, and I myself have got the first jab and hoping to get the second in two months time.
One of the big problems for the people here is misinformation. We have a president who continues to downplay the severity of Covid-19. He and his allies tell people to get out and forget about masks, while the state governors and city mayors are telling people to stay home and if, by chance, they have to go out, to always wear a mask and to practice social distancing. The result is that virtually all of Brazil’s Covid-19 intensive care units are full to capacity.
There are people queuing up outside hospitals with sick family members imploring, pleading for a vacancy. While inside the hospitals there is another line of patients waiting to get into intensive care and to make matters worse the hospitals are running out of medical supplies and oxygen.
Our daily death toll unfortunately is around 3,000. The total number of deaths is over 300,000. Just to put that into perspective it’s more than twice the population of Mayo.
Unfortunately the government was also very slow in buying vaccines and now it’s almost impossible to get vaccines. At the moment, only around 6% of the population has been vaccinated. So the future looks bleak.
Normal is not going to return for many people because many families have been devastated, they have lost parents, spouses, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, etc., to the pandemic.
Only God knows when my wife and myself will be able to head for Mayo again but I hope that some day in the future we’ll be able to go to Knock and thank Our Lady that we made it.