Rio de Janeiro Passes São Paulo, Becomes Brazilian Municipality with Most Covid-19 Deaths

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Almost one year after the outbreak of the pandemic in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro is now the city with the highest number of confirmed deaths from the disease in the country.

On Thursday, February 4th, 106 new deaths from the disease were confirmed, reaching the grim number of 17,535 lives lost since March 2020. Despite having almost twice the population of Rio, São Paulo, the previous leader in total number of deaths, confirmed only 17,523 fatalities from the coronavirus to date.

However, Rio’s rise to the top of this sad ranking had been expected. The city had been leading the ranking of deaths by Covid-19 among municipalities in the country since September.

A few weeks ago, Manaus, which is experiencing a collapse in its healthcare system, overtook Rio in confirmed deaths in a two-week interval. However, the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro maintained a level of new deaths well above São Paulo’s capital.

Cities with the highest accumulated number of confirmed deaths by Covid-19 in the country:

Rio de Janeiro – 17,535
São Paulo – 17,523
Manaus – 6,046
Brasília – 4,591
Fortaleza – 4,360

Data released on Wednesday, February 3rd, and analyzed by researcher Wesley Cota, of the Federal University of Viçosa, show that over the past 14 days, Rio confirmed 886 deaths by Covid-19, while São Paulo registered 619.

A total of 182 new coronavirus deaths and over 2,800 cases of the disease were confirmed in the whole state of Rio. Since the start of the pandemic, 30,354 people have died from the disease and more than 532,000 have been diagnosed with the virus.

With Thursday’s data, the rolling average in the state is now 2,798 cases and 134 deaths per day. Compared to two weeks ago, there was a 6% reduction in the number of deaths, which points to a trend of stability in terms of infection rate because it is below the minimum established mark of 15%.