‘A miracle I survived’: Younger Brazilians hit by COVID surge

Experts say younger patients are developing severe COVID-19 symptoms and dying, as hospitals are pushed to the brink.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – When Allessandro Cabral began to experience COVID symptoms in early March, he thought nothing much of it. In fact, the 41-year-old even reassured his friends: “I have COVID,” he wrote them in a WhatsApp message from his home in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone. “But I’m not at risk: I eat healthy, I work out. It will pass.” After a week of light COVID symptoms, however, Cabral’s condition worsened dramatically. He couldn’t breathe and went to a local hospital, then to a field hospital, where he was put on oxygen and was on the verge of being intubated. “But God didn’t allow it,” he told Al Jazeera. “I felt sensations of death, it’s a miracle I survived. I wouldn’t even wish that on my worst enemy.”