RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Brazil is suffering a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases as the Omicron variant spreads through the country, putting pressure on health services and weighing on an already sputtering economy.

Insufficient testing and a data blackout caused by hackers have made it harder for experts to track the spread of the highly contagious variant in Brazil, but there are increasingly clear signs it is hitting Latin America’s largest nation hard.

Confirmed cases have almost doubled since last week, with the rolling average for the past seven days surging to 52,500, from 27,267 last Wednesday.

Experts believe the actual number is much higher, due to a shortage of tests and patchy systems for reporting and public disclosure of data.

So far deaths – at around 120 a day – remain far lower than last year, when Brazil was briefly the global epicenter of the pandemic with more than 3,000 deaths per day.

With more than 620,000 dead, Brazil has the third-highest death toll from COVID-19, behind the United States and Russia, according to Reuters calculations.

President Jair Bolsonaro has been widely criticized for his handling of the pandemic, rallying against lockdowns, refusing to wear a mask in public and opting not to get vaccinated.

Epidemiologists hope a strong vaccination campaign, which has seen 67% of the population fully inoculated, will dent the impact of the current wave of infections.

But as demand rises for health services, hospitals are also suffering staff shortages as doctors and nurses self-isolate after testing positive for the virus.

“If you don’t know a friend who’s got the virus at the moment, it means you don’t have any friends,” said César Eduardo Fernandes, head of the Brazilian Medical Association (AMB).

“The situation is worrying and it is possible some services will collapse,” he said, adding that staff absences at hospitals had tripled in four weeks since the Omicron wave hit.

A São Paulo physicians union on Friday threatened a strike next Wednesday by doctors staffing public clinics in the country’s biggest city to demand reinforcements. The union said front-line doctors were suffering from exhaustion and understaffing as infected colleagues are forced to isolate.

‘WITHOUT RELIABLE DATA’

The variant is also slamming the wider economy. Brazil’s National Association of Restaurants said 85% of its members are dealing with staff absences, with some 20% of the workforce out.

Airlines Azul SA (AZUL.N) and Latam Airlines Group (LTM.SN) were forced to cancel flights due to a shortage of staff, resulting in long queues in some airports.

To try and alleviate the impact, the Health Ministry reduced this week the quarantine period for asymptomatic COVID-19 patients to seven days, from 10.

Several states have canceled Carnival celebrations, hoping to slow the spread. Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have both banned the famous street parties, though for now both cities still plan a samba parade.

Scientists worry the full scale of the outbreak might only become clear in coming weeks.

Some Health Ministry databases have been offline since an apparent ransomware attack on Dec. 10 seriously hampered the government’s ability to gather data from state health authorities. Testing remains well below that of South American peers.

“We’re completely without reliable data,” said Alexandre Naime Barbosa, head of epidemiology at Sao Paulo’s State University.

LIMA, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Two people drowned off a beach in northern Peru, the local civil defense authority reported on Sunday, after unusually high waves were recorded in several coastal areas following Saturday’s eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga in the Pacific Ocean.

The death of two people by drowning occurred on Saturday on a beach located in the Lambayeque region, Peru’s National Institute of Civil Defense (Indeci) said in a statement.

The underwater volcano off Tonga erupted on Saturday, prompting tsunami warnings and evacuation orders in Japan and causing huge waves on several South Pacific islands, where images on social media show waves crashing against homes on the shores. read more

More than 20 Peruvian ports were temporarily closed as a precautionary measure amid warnings that the volcano was causing abnormally high waves, Indeci said.

The Peruvian police said on Twitter that the two victims were found dead by officers from a Naylamp beach police station. The tweet said “the waves were abnormal” in the area and that it had been declared unsuitable for bathers.

TV images showed several homes and businesses flooded by seawater in coastal areas in northern and central Peru.

The Peruvian Navy had reported that a tsunami alert was ruled out for the Pacific Coast country.

In Japan, hundreds of thousands of people were advised to evacuate on Sunday as waves of more than a meter hit coastal areas, public broadcaster NHK reported. read more

The footage on social media showed large waves crashing into coastal homes in several South Pacific islands.

TEGUCIGALPA, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Hundreds of Hondurans and Nicaraguans on Saturday reached the Guatemalan border but were prevented from crossing by Guatemalan security forces, the first such U.S.-bound migrant caravan to be formed this year in Central America.

Some migrants at the Izabel border crossing in Guatemala threw objects at Guatemalan security forces, who pushed them back with riot shields, according to a video shared by Guatemalan authorities.

The caravan set off days before leftist President-elect Xiomara Castro takes office in Honduras on Jan. 27. She has vowed to revive the economy and combat corruption that stokes waves of mass migration to the United States.

Earlier in the day, the migrants, mostly young people carrying backpacks on their shoulders and women with children, left a bus terminal in the northern city of San Pedro Sula for the Honduran border post of Corinto, across from Izabel. Some were pushing children in baby carriages.

“There is no work,” said Pablo Mendez, a Honduran carrying his 2-year-old daughter in his arms. “That is why people are leaving in this caravan.”

Reuters video footage showed large groups of hundreds of people walking across San Pedro Sula, with many crossing busy highways on foot. Another group had set off in the dark early in the morning.

Guatemalan authorities said about 100 people crossed into Guatemala at unauthorized border crossings, and later added that some 36 people have been returned to Honduras.

Previously, Honduran police have formed roadblocks to prevent many such caravans from reaching the border crossing. Guatemalan security forces have also clashed with migrant groups when they tried to force their way across without documents.

The first caravan of the year comes after deep economic hardship and poverty that plagues 62% of the Honduran population, made worse by the coronavirus pandemic and two back-to-back hurricanes in 2020 that hobbled the economy.

In Nicaragua, political crackdowns by President Daniel Ortega’s government before and after the Nov. 7 presidential elections have led to a surge in migration.

Euclides Mendes, a Nicaraguan migrant, said the size of the caravan gave him hope that the treacherous journey would be safe.

“It’s true that we’re going to walk a lot, but we’re going, and the important thing is to get to the finish line,” Mendes added.