With the accelerated spread of Covid-19 in inland cities, infected people are arriving in large urban centers with a negative prognosis for recovery.
In smaller municipalities, initial treatment tends to be more precarious. Therefore, state managers seek more ICU beds and means of transportation for patients.
The 27 capitals comprise 24% of the country's population but have almost half of the beds in intensive care units for adults.
Inland, these resources are concentrated in about 300 larger municipalities, with more than 100 thousand inhabitants. This means that only 6% of cities in Brazil have ICU beds.
Approximately 100 million people live in places without this type of care. The 32 million who live in 3,670 municipalities with up to 20 thousand inhabitants are most at risk.
The inequality in the distribution of units is more serious in the North and Northeast, but there are also problems in other regions.
The fact that the Ministry of Health does not have a national map of the units promised in the administration of Luiz Henrique Mandetta, also makes it challenging to distribute patients from the countryside to large centers.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon