Signs Brazil’s death toll starting to ease
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s Covid19 death toll appears to be easing for the first time since May, data shows, a sign the Latin American country could be descending from a long infection plateau that has seen it suffer the world’s secondworst outbreak after the United States.
With nearly 4 million confirmed cases in the country, the virus has killed more than 120,000 people in Brazil. But the level of average daily deaths dropped below 900 per day last week — the lowest in three and ahalf months and below the rate of both the US and India.
Researchers at Imperial College London also calculate that the transmission rate in Brazil, at which each person infected with the coronavirus infects another person, is now below 1, the level required for infections to slow.
However, the rate previously fell below 1 in August, only to rebound a week later, according to Imperial.
The government statistics are also volatile. On Wednesday and Thursday this week, Brazil registered more than 1100 deaths each day, and experts say it is too early to say the worst is over.
“We are on a downward trend compared to the previous high plateau,” said Roberto Medronho, an infectious diseases expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
“But, the numbers are still high and we have to remain vigilant so that it doesn’t grow again.”
Epidemiologists see Brazil’s example as a warning to some countries, such as India, that are now seeing cases surge.
“Brazil is a cautionary tale,” said Albert Ko, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health who has decades of experience in Brazil.
“The epidemic hit hard and many evidencebased interventions were not implemented or done properly in many places.”
Social distancing, held by most public health experts as the key tool for containing the spread of the virus while no vaccine exists, was poorly implemented from the start in Brazil, sustaining the long peak in infections and deaths, experts say.
Data suggests that has been weakening too.
A Reuters analysis of Google mobility data, which collates cellphone movement, showed that the number of people coming and going from places of work in Brazil went from a 37.8% reduction from prepandemic levels in April to down just 16% in August. Movement at transit hubs has also increased substantially.
“We have to work, because we pay rent and the cost of living is very expensive,” said waitress Patricia Lima, who returned to her job in Rio de Janeiro this month after three months at home.
Stayathome measures have been loosened across almost the entire country amid pressure from President Jair Bolsonaro, who has criticised them as harmful to the economy.
For Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo’s Medical School, the main cause of the long plateau was places such as the south and midwest failing to maintain lockdown measures. — Reuters