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Suellen de Souza could no longer endure the confinement. After six months of taking precautions, the nursing technician decided that Sunday would be her first day at the beach since the beginning of the pandemic.
“This week it was very hot … the truth is that I really wanted to come,” said the 21-year-old, who was arriving at Ipanema beach, in Rio de Janeiro.
Under a strong midday sun, it was difficult to find an empty space in the sand. In front of Suellen, thousands of people enjoyed a day at the beachHundreds of umbrellas coexisted, groups of young people playing with balls and families sunbathing, despite an order from the mayor’s office that prohibits staying on the sand.
All of them in a compressed space and without face masks: scenes from a weekend challenging the existence of a pandemic.
With an epidemiological curve that has begun to recede, thousands of Brazilians exhausted with the measures of quarantine for the new coronavirus care is increasingly relaxed and the beaches overflow as if the crisis had ended in a country where its president Jair Bolsonaro has minimized the pandemic.
SOCIAL DISTANCING? / AP In Rio, the challenge to the rules and recommendations of staying isolated even reached De Souza, a nursing assistant who worked in a field hospital to care for patients with coronavirus.
“It is getting a little more control over the coronavirusThat gave me the security to go out ”, assured De Souza.
In Sao Paulo, the worst hit state with more than 845,000 confirmed infections and 31,000 deaths from the virus, the scenario was similar. Thousands took advantage of the long weekend to travel to the state’s coastline.
“If you stay indoors for a long time, you go crazy. I was like this. The moment I found out that the beach was free, I decided to come, ”said Josy Santos, a 26-year-old teacher who spent the day in Guarujá, a seaside resort an hour from the city of Sao Paulo.
With more than 4,100,000 confirmed infections and at least 126,000 deaths from the virus, Brazil is the second country with the highest absolute numbers only behind the United States. The largest country in Latin America left behind in recent weeks a plateau of almost a thousand deaths that dragged almost three months and had a reduction in the number of cases.
However, the figures are still considered very high by specialists, with an average of 820 deaths per day. Patricia Canto, a pulmonologist at the Fiocruz Institute, said that Europe, and especially Spain, can be a mirror if the behavior of Brazilians is negligent.
“Spain controlled the pandemic, but there were new outbreaks when many young people were neglected during the summer,” he said. “If the population is not aware and continues to frequent beaches and bars without care, it can be a mirror”.
President Bolsonaro encouraged from the beginning to return to normal life to avoid that the impact on the economy was greater than that of the virus itself.
Geraldo Tadeu, coordinator of the Center for Studies and Research on Democracy, said that the lack of coordination in the fight against COVID-19 of governments led to a demoralization of Brazilians.
“After six months, no one else can stand to stay indoors seeing how there is no clear guideline to fight the virus,” said Tadeu. “As there was no serious policy, the population was exhausted. He goes out to the streets when he sees that The effort of staying at home, while others do not comply, is no longer worth it”.
“Everybody has to go out to go to the market, buy things, work … nobody is going to stay indoors,” Santos said. the world, because it doesn’t matter, “he added.
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