Since the end of May, three months after the first case of coronavirus in Brazil, there have been more than 1,000 deaths daily on average. a horrible plateau that has yet to lean down.
On Thursday night, the federal health ministry reported that the country had exceeded 2 million confirmed cases of virus infections and 76,000 deaths.
Experts blame President Jair Bolsonaro’s denial of the virus’s deadly potential and the lack of national coordination combined with scattered responses from state and municipal governments, with some reopens earlier than recommended by health experts. An interim minister of health without field training chairs the response to the pandemic, and Bolsonaro himself you are sick with COVID-19 after repeatedly flouting social distance recommendations and undermining activity restrictions on local leaders.
The approximately 7,000 deaths of COVID-19 in Brazil in each of the past seven weeks equates to several planes full of Brazilians crashing every day, former health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta told The Associated Press.
“People have become callous,” said Mandetta. “When you say, ‘Yesterday there were 1,300 deaths,’ people say, ‘OK, so it didn’t go up. There were 1,300 people the day before as well.'”
Brazil’s case count is second only to the US, and experts believe the number is a low count due to a general lack of evidence. A model created by professors from various Brazilian academic institutions, based on the number of confirmed deaths, estimates that Brazil has had 10 million infections.
The virus has begun to reach previously preserved cities and states, compensating for falls elsewhere. The number of deaths has decreased in states like Rio de Janeiro and Amazonas, where people were buried in mass graves in the capital Manaus. In the last two weeks, 10 of the 26 states of Brazil and its Federal District registered increases, with double the daily rates of daily deaths in two southern states.
Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the severity of COVID-19, saying that strict social distancing measures that sacrifice jobs and income will ultimately be more damaging than the virus itself, and has called on supporters to encourage their local leaders. to lift restrictions on activity. Many mayors and governors have struggled to hold the line.
In Ribeirao Preto, a city in the state of Sao Paulo, merchants protesting on Wednesday demanded that they be allowed to reopen. They surrounded the mayor’s car when he left City Hall, banging on his windows and cursing him.
Campinas, a city of 1.2 million people closer to the state capital, took early quarantine measures but succumbed to political pressure and reopened trade on June 8, said Pedro de Siqueira, a city councilor. from Campinas. The city center was filled with shoppers like an overturned anthill, he said in an interview.
Two weeks later, the number of deaths from COVID-19 had tripled to approximately 253, as well as the number of confirmed cases, to 6,324. Intensive care beds were filled with patients, prompting the mayor to re-establish trade restrictions on June 22, but allowed offices and churches to continue operating.
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“Campinas reopened prematurely and wrongly, with the support of the state government,” said Siqueira, who is also a public health doctor, at the time. “This reopening was so catastrophic that Campinas had to step back, but only partially.”
Since then, the number of cases and deaths in Campinas has doubled once again. On Wednesday, the city extended the restrictions until July 30.
Daniel Soranz, a researcher at the national health school of the state biology institute Fiocruz, said that the center-west of Brazil that includes the agricultural heartland will be the last region affected by the virus. And, looking at deaths from severe respiratory failure, it appears that Brazil as a whole has begun to turn the corner, he said.
“By the end of August, we should be in a much better place than today,” Soranz said.
In Sao Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil with 46 million residents, the number of deaths has stabilized at a level slightly below its peak. On Wednesday in one of the capital’s cemeteries, Michelle Caverni buried her 88-year-old aunt, who died of COVID-19 and also suffered from pulmonary emphysema.
“Until you knock on their door, people are indifferent,” said Caverni, 40, a restaurant chef. “There were 1,300 deaths yesterday from COVID-19. Are they supposed to be few? People say it’s just the media. I listen to it every day at work.”
The model from the University of Washington Institute for Health Measurement and Assessment projects that Brazil’s death toll will reach nearly 200,000 in November, nearly closing the gap with that of the United States. The forecast has a wide margin of error.
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