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After reaching 145,328 official cases and 9,897 deaths from covid-19 yesterday (8), Brazil is expected to exceed the milestone of 10,000 deaths officially attributed to the disease this Saturday (9), the day that President Jair Bolsonaro (without party) Says that will hold a barbecue.
Deaths from coronavirus disease have risen to a plateau in Brazil in the past three days, reaching 751 deaths recorded yesterday. It is the new record of deaths recorded in 24 hours: it had been between 600 and 615 from Tuesday to Thursday. And the number of victims is even higher, given the delay in updating the data and underreporting.
Still, Bolsonaro scoffed at the pandemic two days in a row this week. On Thursday (7), at a press conference, the president spoke at a barbecue at the Palácio da Alvorada and estimated the guests at around 30 people. “We are going to have a conversation, maybe a little peladinha,” he said at the time.
Yesterday, Bolsonaro insisted on the matter, in a kind of call to his supporters. “I’m going to call about 1,300 guests, but whoever has here tomorrow, if there are 1,000, we come in,” he said, laughing.
Invitation or provocation, the fact is that the country is close to reaching 10,000 official deaths from covid-19 faster than France and the United States, two other countries most affected by this pandemic. For Brazil not to exceed 10,000 deaths today, it would have to record fewer than 103 deaths a day, something that unfortunately has not happened since April 14.
Brazil should reach 10,000 deaths faster than the United States
Based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Twitter He did a survey to compare the speed with which five other countries reached such a death toll. The list considers the date of the first official case and the date of the 10,000th death recorded. Brazil diagnosed its first patient with covid-19 on February 26, therefore, 73 days before this Saturday (9).
By this same metric, the UK reached 10,000 deaths in the same 73 days; France, at 75; and the United States, at 79. Among the countries that have already exceeded this death toll in this pandemic, only Italy (60 days) and Spain (63) represented it faster than Brazil.
Naturally, this comparison requires caution, as the countries are demographically different and are also at different times within the pandemic: EE. USA And Brazil still sees its cases of covid-19 escalate, while Europeans have already passed the peak of contamination.
However, the contrast of the data at least suggests that, in Brazil, the disease increases as much or faster than in the countries that represent more victims in the world.
“The big problem is the lack of evidence. There are many cases that became suspicious: they had Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and they suspected covid-19, but they were never confirmed. The same is true of deaths. And there are also deaths.” [de covid-19] who, for various reasons, were never admitted, and part of them is classified as an indefinite cause, “says Eliseu Waldman, an infectologist at the Faculty of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (USP).
From the first case to 10,000 deaths (according to WHO data):
- Italy, 60 days
- Spain, 63 days
- Brazil and United Kingdom, 73 days (if it happens today, 9 in Brazil)
- France, 75 days
- United States, 79 days
The numbers can hide an even bigger tragedy
The cold numbers, however, do not show the degree of underreporting of covid-19 cases. Unlike the vast majority of countries, Brazil does not disclose how many tests for the disease have been carried out to date. According to data from the Ministry of Health, in this pandemic 322 thousand non-specific tests of covid-19 (which identify respiratory viruses in general) were carried out.
Even the general tests are few compared to other countries. Brazil only performs 1.5 non-specific tests for every 1,000 inhabitants it has, a rate comparable to Thailand (1.29 tests per 1,000 inhabitants), Pakistan (1.17) and Senegal (1.16) – all three countries have specific tests for covid-19.
Among the countries that, like Brazil, have already reached 10,000 official deaths from covid-19, Italy is the one with the most evidence of the disease: 39.3 per 1,000 inhabitants. The following are Spain (rate of 28.9 per 1,000 people); United States (24.5); United Kingdom (16.8); and France (12.7) – rates are site “ourworldindata.org”, which collects information from the governments of each country.
“We are sure there is an underreporting of cases and deaths, but the extent to which we will still know,” says infectologist Eliseu Waldman. He explains that after the pandemic it will be possible to estimate underreporting by relating the national death accounting system, the Mortality Information System (SIM) and knowing the approximate lethality of the disease.
Underreporting in Brazil may be of the order of 1,200%
Those who perform fewer tests naturally make fewer covid-19 diagnoses, explains the epidemiologist Pedro Hallal, who is the rector of the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel). He led an investigation that evaluated the underreporting of the disease in the state of Rio Grande do Sul and concluded that, for each official case, there are 12 others that do not appear in the statistics.
In this way, the cases already confirmed by RS would only be “the tip of the iceberg”, in Hallal’s words. The same logic applies to all of Brazil: the USP School of Medicine estimates that the actual number of cases already exceeds 1.6 million.
“There is a point that is visible, which is above sea level, which is represented by the cases that appear in official statistics and tends to be the most serious cases. And there are all the people who have milder symptoms and do not go to go, they were tested, but they were also infected with the covid-19 virus, “explains Hallal, who this week participated in a UOL debate on the subject (see below).
