Brazil Rapidly Became Country with World’s Second-highest Covid-19 Death Toll

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Two weeks were enough for Brazil to jump from fifth to second place in the ranking of countries with the highest number of deaths by Covid-19.

On Friday, June 12th, the country topped the United Kingdom (which records 41,481 deaths) by reporting 41,828 fatalities from the novel coronavirus. According to data from the Ministry of Health, the country records 828,810 infections – with 909 new deaths and 25,982 cases reported in the previous 24 hours – and is still investigating a further 4,033 deaths.

A month ago, health authorities and scientists warned of the trend for Brazil to become the next global epicenter of the pandemic, a position currently held by the United States, with 2,083,548 confirmed cases and 116,130 deaths. In the ranking of deaths per million inhabitants, Brazil ranks 11th globally, with 180 deaths per million people. Belgium leads the count, with 831 deaths per million people, followed by Spain, with 580 deaths per million, according to World Health Organization (W.H.O.) data.

In early May, when the Ministry of Health had not yet recorded 8,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus, studies by Johns Hopkins University and a survey by the Covid-19 BR Observatory showed that the country would exceed 1.6 million infections. At the time, specifically on May 8th, the Medical School of USP (University of São Paulo) in Ribeirão Preto published a study showing that Brazil already had two million Covid-19 cases. Considering this estimate, there would be four million cases today.

On May 20th, EL PAÍS newspaper estimated that only one in every 20 cases is notified by the government and that the number of infections in Brazil could reach 3.7 million people. This figure is obtained when applying the methodology used by a group of mathematicians and epidemiologists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical to determine underreporting.

Vitor Engrácia Valenti, Ph.D. and professor at UNIFESP (Federal University of São Paulo), who also works with projections carried out by Oxford University in London, points out that Brazil may already be the global epicenter of the pandemic. “With an estimate of the disease’s behavior, it was expected that the peak of contagion would occur in two or three months after the first case, but Covid-19 is still in progress in Brazil”, says the researcher.

Valenti points out that with the recent relaxation of protective measures – trade and other services reopened this week in São Paulo, the country’s main city – Brazil could record over 2,000 daily deaths in early July. Domingos Alves, a professor of medicine in charge of the Health Intelligence Laboratory (LIS) at Ribeirão Preto’s University of São Paulo School of Medicine, said the record could be even higher.

“We are the only country in the world that after the 50th day was experiencing an increase in the number of cases and deaths. We have projections that suggest we could reach 5,000 deaths per day in July,” he says.

“Since we can’t anticipate people’s behavior, whether or not they will respect social isolation, we may have 3,000 or 4,000 daily deaths next month,” Valeti says. A study he took part in shows that isolation saved at least 10,000 lives in the country. According to the scientist, talking about an “optimistic scenario” for Brazil is no longer an option.

“In our realistic projection, the country would have 41,000 deaths by Covid-19 on June 9th, a figure very close to that officially recorded on the date [38,406], considering the controversy over transparency in the figures released by the Ministry. According to the pessimistic projection, we could reach 60,000 deaths by the end of this month”.

Source: El País