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The contagion rate of the coronavirus in Brazil, which indicates the speed with which the pathogen spreads among the population, rose again in the week that began on Sunday (6), indicates a calculation of one of the main epidemic monitoring centers of the world. , MRC, from Imperial College.
The country had registered a rate of 0.94 in the previous week, which meant a slowdown in the expansion of Covid-19, but the indicator (known as Rt) rose to 1. With this, the transmission speed remains constant, which that makes it difficult to control the epidemic.
The Brazilian contagion rate has been above 1 for 16 consecutive weeks since the end of April, and it has been fluctuating for the last four weeks: it has fallen below 1 in two of them and has been equal to 1 in the other two .
In the 14 days ended Thursday (10), 480,733 new cases of coronavirus were registered, according to data from the ECDC (Agency for the Control of Communicable Diseases). The sum is 22% less than the 616,331 of the two weeks that ended on August 10 and 12% less than that of the fortnight that ended at the beginning of the month.
However, the accuracy of reported cases has also declined, according to Imperial College estimates. Brazil had been registering 64% of coronavirus infections, and now it registers 62.3%: more than a third of cases are not detected, according to calculations.
After considering the size of the populations, Brazil is the third South American country with the highest number of cases. There were 228 diagnoses per 100 thousand inhabitants in the five-year period ended this Thursday, behind Argentina (with 314/100 thousand) and Peru (235/100 thousand).
The spread of the contagion rate around 1 has also occurred in other countries in South America. This week, five of them have an estimated Rt above 1: Paraguay (1.2), Argentina (1.17), Bolivia (1.07) and Chile and Venezuela (1.02).
Transmission is losing momentum in Ecuador and Peru, both with a Rt of 0.98: this means that every 100 people transmit the coronavirus to another 98, who in turn pass the disease to 96 and so on, reducing the spread of Covid -19.
Imperial College calculates the transmission rate based on the number of reported deaths, because the data is less subject to underreporting than the recorded cases; As there is a lag between the moment of infection and death, changes in policies to combat the epidemic take an average of two weeks to be reflected in the calculations.
According to WHO monitoring, in South America, only Guyana and Uruguay do not have community-based coronavirus transmission.