Brazil Confirms First Coronavirus Case

Brazil registered its first case of coronavirus last Tuesday. Folha received news that a suspected case came back positive. Earlier, the man had tested positive for the virus at Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, in Sao Paulo. Now he is being tested at the Adolfo Lutz Institute, the result of which should be announced on Wednesday (26) by the Ministry of Health. With that, Brazil becomes the first country in Latin America with a confirmed case of the new virus that has already killed 2,708 people in the world. The period in which the man was in Italy for work (from 9 to 21 February) coincided with the explosion of cases in the European country when more than 220 people were infected. Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein saw the patient on Monday (24), and the state Epidemiological Surveillance was notified on Tuesday (25). "The patient is in good clinical condition and does not need to be hospitalized. He will remain in respiratory isolation for the next 14 days", said the hospital in a note. The man is at home. Anvisa said in a statement, on Tuesday night, that it asked the airline for the list of passengers on the flight that brought the patient to Brazil, and that "it increased monitoring international flights from countries where there are confirmed cases of the disease." On Tuesday (25), the agency had disclosed that the first test performed on the patient had tested positive for Sars-CoV-2. The samples were sent to the national reference laboratory, the Adolfo Lutz Institute, to confirm the infection.