To:
Mr. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
President
United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
 
 
Dear Mr. President,
 
Brazil is in the middle of the most serious health and humanitarian crisis in the country’s history. It needs your help urgently. Brazil currently averages more than 3,000 COVID-19 deaths and 74,000 new cases per day and climbing. Deaths have reached over 440,000 people. The country is the epicenter of the pandemic, with about a third of COVID-19 daily deaths worldwide.  Hospitals are in critical condition and intensive care units in twenty of Brazil’s twenty-seven states have operated above 100 percent capacity. With a healthcare system on the brink of collapse and only 18% percent of the population having received a first vaccination shot, the country is becoming a global risk – a breeding ground for new variants. According to the Boston Globe, the P.1 variant has already spread to twenty-one countries, and it is becoming dominant in Massachusetts. A few weeks ago two new variants emerged in Brazil, one that shares similarities with P.1 and with the UK variant.
 
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing severe social and economic suffering with more than 14 million people on unemployment and another 30 million living in subhuman conditions. Indigenous populations have been deeply affected, as have quilombola (maroon) and other vulnerable populations, while the government continues to downplay COVID-19 as a “little flu.” It is time to leave politics aside and save lives. The time to assign responsibility will come. Now, we join Pope Francis in calling for a “spirit of global responsibility” as he encourages nations to overcome “delays in the distribution of vaccines” to countries of the global south.
 
To help the Brazilian people overcome this disastrous situation and to mitigate global risks, we urge you, President Biden, to: (a) mobilize the support of the US government in working with companies, other governments and international health partners to identify pathways to provide, on an urgent basis, enough vaccines to slow down the spread and ongoing mutation of the virus in Brazil; and (b) work with companies that are developing and producing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to encourage them to establish partnerships with the highly capable vaccine manufacturers in Brazil to leverage local capacities to help enable substantially greater and more sustainable vaccine supply for Brazil. Brazil has a long history of development and production of such vaccines, and the capacity to distribute these effectively across the country, given its unified health system (SUS).
 
Mr. President, we are deeply concerned about the fate of the Brazilian people who already suffer from economic and social disparities and now bear the brunt of this pandemic. We write to appeal to your humanitarian spirit and to encourage you to act on the two proposals outlined in this letter.
 
Mr. President, we, members of the Brazilian Diaspora, friends of Brazil, and citizens concerned with the plight of
the Brazilian people, will forever be grateful.
 
Respectfully,