RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the latest bulletin released by the Ministry of Health, Brazil surpassed 450,000 deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday, after 2,173 deaths in the last 24 hours.
The country also recorded 73,453 cases in the period, bringing the total number of infections to 16,194,209 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Today’s data more than double those recorded the day before (790 deaths and 37,498 cases). Still, authorities have reiterated that the numbers are lower on weekends and Mondays due to a lack of personnel to process the data but rise again on Tuesdays.
With its 210 million inhabitants, Brazil is the country with the second-most deaths from Covid-19, behind the United States, and the third with the most cases, after the U.S. and India.
The infection curve has begun to rise in recent weeks, with an average of 66,910 infections per day in the last 7 days. The authorities fear an even greater increase after the identification in Brazil of the Indian variant of Covid-19 to be more transmissible.
The health crisis could also be complicated by the slow vaccination process in the country, with only 10% of the population immunized with two doses due to the lack of available active ingredients for local manufacture.
The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) restarted the manufacture of the immunizer developed by the laboratory AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford after the arrival last Saturday of a shipment of API, the active pharmacological component of the vaccine, enough for the development of another 12 million doses.
Production, however, continues to be paralyzed at the Butantan Institute, responsible for the manufacture of the vaccine of the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, which on Tuesday received 3,000 liters of inputs, equivalent to 5 million doses.
Both immunizers, together with Pfizer, are the only ones currently available in the country.
The shortage of vaccine doses is under the spotlight of a parliamentary commission investigating possible negligence committed by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro during the pandemic.