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“Brazil is already in the second wave of covid-19”.
The alert comes from the researcher Domingos Alves, head of the LIS (Laboratory of Health Intelligence) of the Faculty of Medicine of USP (University of São Paulo), in Ribeirão Preto.
Alves has been following data from the Brazilian pandemic for eight months as one of those responsible for the Covid-19 Brazil portal, which brings together dozens of specialists from different areas around the production of statistics and analysis of the spread of the new coronavirus in the country.
His assessment that Brazil is experiencing, like the United States and Europe, a new wave of infections is based on the evolution of the reproduction rate (Rt) of the coronavirus in the country, which indicates that the pandemic has grown again here.
This rate is calculated based on the increase in new cases and allows to know how many people are infected by someone who is already infected.
If the index is greater than 1, it indicates that the pandemic is expanding. When it is below it, it is a sign that the pandemic is fading.
In the case of Brazil, the rate was 1.12 on November 16, according to the Respiratory Syndromes Observatory of the Federal University of Paraíba.
This means that 100 people will infect 112 more, which in turn will infect another 125. Thus, the Brazilian epidemic is growing exponentially.
On the same date, Rt was above 1 in 20 states (Acre, Alagoas, Amapá, Bahia, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais, Paraíba, Paraná, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Rondônia, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Sergipe and Tocantins) and the Federal District.
The situation was more critical in Paraná, where the rate was 1.62. In Santa Catarina, Rt has been above 1 for the longest: since October 14.
Alves also analyzed the moving average of Rt, which is calculated based on the previous 14 days.
“It is important to look at the moving average because it indicates that it is not just a fluctuation in the index, but that there is a concrete trend to an upward or downward trend,” says the researcher.
In this case, on November 16, the value in Brazil was 1.06. On the same date, the moving average of Rt was above 1 in 16 states (Acre, Alagoas, Amapá, Bahía, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Paraíba, Paraná, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, Rondônia, Santa Catarina and São Paulo).
Again, the highest index was Paraná (1.34), but Acre (1.32) was almost as high.
Espírito Santo was the state where the Rt moving average had been above 1 for the longest time since September 20. But Santa Catarina also stood out, with a moving average of Rt above 1 since October 8.
The average number of new cases also increased again
The moving average of Rt do Brasil has been above 1 since November 11. I mean, almost a week ago. The index has not risen above this level since August 10.
That is, after three months of contraction, the pandemic has grown again in the country, characterizing the second wave identified by Alves.
This is clearly reflected in the covid-19 Brazil tracking of the moving average of new cases registered in the country.
This rate had been showing a downward trend since mid-August and reached its lowest value since November 6, with 13,644 new cases.
Then he went back up. On November 16, the moving average was 28,425 new cases, an increase of 208% in a matter of ten days.
It is the same situation facing the United States and Europe, where the spread of the coronavirus has intensified in recent weeks.
“Our second wave will be more like the United States than Europe, because Europe was able to really control transmission, which came back in force after the summer, when people went on a trip and brought new strains of the virus home. “says Alves.
In the United States and Brazil, on the other hand, there was no real control of the pandemic, according to the researcher, which generated almost an overlap between the waves of contagion.
“We could never control community transmission,” says the USP scientist, referring to the stage of an epidemic in which a virus circulates freely among the population.
This week, President Jair Bolsonaro (without a party) commented on the possibility that the country faces a second wave of infections.
“And now there is the conversation of the second wave. You have to face it if you have (second wave). If the economy breaks down, we will be a country of miserable people,” he said on Friday (13) when he left the Palácio da Alvorada.
Underreporting can hide an even more serious reality
Domingos Alves says that the situation in reality may be even more serious than official data shows.
“Since mid-September the problem of under-registration has worsened, because fewer tests are being carried out, and among those that are being carried out, there are fewer and fewer PCR tests, which are more accurate, and faster tests, which give a lot of false negatives (tests that fail to verify that the person is infected) ”, says the researcher.
Alves says that these figures should translate into a greater number of hospitalizations, as is already happening in São Paulo.
“A significant increase is expected in these states over the next two weeks,” he says. “The trend is for the outlook to get much worse.”
Everything will depend on how the Brazilian authorities face the new wave of cases that are already beginning to be reflected in the statistics.
“When the first wave arrived, the scenario was the same: the cases multiplied in Europe and the United States and we knew we were going to get here, but we continued to clear the ice, we did not take the appropriate measures and we had to close everything,” says the scientific. .
“Once again, we know what will happen to us when we see the United States and Europe. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when.”
Now, Alves says, the country has already accumulated experience on how to deal with the pandemic and examples of what works best to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
He advocates mass testing and monitoring of people with whom the infected have come in contact to isolate everyone and break the chain of transmission.
“Only then can we reverse this second wave and not have to shut everything down again.”
