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Brazil may have already passed the 21,000 death mark of the new coronavirus, according to a projection by the Covid-19 BR Observatory at the request of the Twitter. The calculation takes into account the delay between the occurrence of a death and the entry in official government statistics.
The group’s study, made up of researchers from Brazil and abroad, took into account information about the date of death. However, the Ministry of Health provided this information until May 8. There were no updates after that date, despite requests from the report and the observatory.
On May 8, Brazil officially accounted for 9,897 deaths. However, considering the time to know that the deaths were due to covid-19, the study estimates that, by that date, the country could already have at least 21,789 deaths.
In other words, 2.2 times the announced number, more than double the number published by the ministry (120%).
Yesterday (13), according to the latest update from the ministry, Brazil officially registered 13,149 deaths.
According to the survey, at least 39% of deaths from covid-19 take up to ten days to appear in the notifications published by the Ministry of Health.
“This reveals that what we see today is a portrait more related to the past than to the most current days of the pandemic,” says the observatory.
However, there are deaths with a notification delay of more than ten days. The deaths that occurred on March 18 are an example of the delay in knowing the actual number of deaths.
Nearly two months later, in the bulletin released on May 7, examinations showed that another death from covid-19 had occurred that March day.
In total, it is now known that at least six deaths occurred on March 18. On that day, however, the Ministry of Health was aware of only three, which, it is observed, did not necessarily occur in the last 24 hours, and may have been from previous days.
Close projection
Last month, the observatory made an estimate for Twitter that on April 15, the country would already have 3,800 deaths. Officially at that time, there were 1,736 deaths.
With the update of the bulletin of the date of death on May 8, today it is known that, until mid-April, Brazil had 3,046 deaths, a figure close to that estimated by the observatory.
But past deaths are still only entering notifications from the Ministry of Health, which is expected to increase that number.
Delay is not underreporting
The observatory researchers point out that the projection does not take underreporting into account, but rather the delay in knowing the test results for the new coronavirus.
For these deaths, tests were performed, but the notification that they were due to covid-19 has a time interval, meaning that the number reported daily is not the actual number of deaths on a given date.
“You cannot take the announcement of deaths already registered in recent days as definitive. It will still be updated because others are reaching the base,” says Paulo Inácio Prado, professor at the Institute of Biosciences at USP (University of São Paulo), member of the observatory.
“It is not a problem that the test did not detect. It is that the test is taking too long.”
Daily updates
For the doctoral student at the IFT (Institute of Theoretical Physics) at Unesp (Universidade Estadual Paulista) Rafael Lopes Paixão da Silva, who performed the projection calculations for the observatory, it would be important for the federal government to indicate this estimate of deaths in function of delay in diagnosis.
“The most recent examples show that there is a delay in explaining death,” he said. “One day it had 50 deaths, days later it began to have an order of magnitude more.”
The example he cites is from May 1, when the ministry announced the notification of 428 deaths.
Of these, however, 51 occurred exactly on that date, according to the May 1 bulletin; The other deaths occurred in previous days.
However, a week later, the deaths that actually occurred on May 1 were already 227. The number increased because tests identified deaths on the first day of May that were due to covid-19.
Dates in the past
In Prado’s opinion, if the government made this projection of the actual number of deaths to date, “it would inform the public much better of what is happening.”
“It is not ‘today we have so many deaths’. ‘Today we register so many more deaths that occurred in the past, and therefore tomorrow we may have more deaths on those dates,'” says the professor at USP.
“Knowing the news [da projeção de mortes] Right now, with some precision, it is what will guide our public policy, to understand how many people are being victims of the pandemic, “adds Silva.
