Brazil Marks Grim Covid Milestone With 3 Million Confirmed Cases
Brazil topped 3 million coronavirus infections as the disease flares up in parts of the country it had spared earlier.
(Bloomberg) --
Brazil topped 3 million coronavirus infections as the disease flares up in parts of the country it had spared, spreading misery from the beaches of Bahia to the soybean fields of the vast interior.
The milestone comes less than a month after Brazil hit the 2 million-case mark and as the disease sweeps into more remote regions were access to health care was precarious even before the pandemic. So even as the virus recedes in some of the locations where it first hit -- richer, densely populated urban centers like Sao Paulo -- the country’s curve has yet to flatten.
The country reported 49,970 new cases Saturday and added 905 new deaths, bringing with the total fatality count to more than 100,000.
There’s no relief in sight. Cases will likely increase to 4 million within a month, and the true rate of infection is likely six or seven times the number of positive tests, according to Domingos Alves, the coordinator of the Health Intelligence Department at the University of Sao Paulo.
“The fact we are getting to 3 million cases and 100,000 deaths at the same time shows the gravity of the pandemic in Brazil,” he said in an interview.
Brazil has recorded over 200,000 infections and 7,000 deaths a week for two months.
“That’s five full Boeing planes falling over our heads a day,” Luiz Henrique Mandetta, the first of two health ministers who departed in the midst of the pandemic after disagreeing with the government’s response, said in an interview last month. “It’s incredibly grave.”
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Mandetta, who was fired in April after repeated clashes with President Jair Bolsonaro, has become a harsh critic of Brazil’s response to the pandemic. The lack of a national approach, a shortage of testing and a push to reopen before the disease recedes have made the country a global hotspot, second only to the U.S. in number of cases and deaths.
The mish-mash approach has also made it harder to pinpoint when the infection will start to recede -- already a tall order in a country of 210 million people with some states the size of France where many live in poverty and can’t afford not to work.
Regional differences
The Northeastern state of Bahia, which in early June had fewer than 20,000 cases, now counts more than 180,000 infections. In Minas Gerais, in the center of the country, cases went from 10,000 to 140,000 in the same span. In the South, Santa Catarina went from 9,500 infections to almost 100,000.
Meanwhile, major cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where the virus first arrived, continue to ease restrictions on movement and work as the pace of new infections slows. While Sao Paulo alone has 10,000 deaths, field hospitals are being disbanded and more businesses allowed to reopen. In Rio, occupancy rates at intensive care units in public hospitals have fallen to about 60%.
The Southeast, which includes the hardest-hit states of Sao Paulo and Rio, still accounts for most of the cases and about half of the deaths in the country. The Northeast, which has a little over half of the population, follows in both counts.
The regional differences also show in mortality rates. The virus has been far deadlier in the north, killing 66 out of every 100,000 inhabitants. Early in the pandemic, health systems in cities like Manaus and Belem, often the only places were medical care is available, were overwhelmed by the disease. The area has the lowest number of ICU beds per capita in the country -- 0.9 per 10,000, compared to 2.7 in the more developed Southeast, according to medical association Amib.
The poor are likely to be hit hard by the economic toll of the virus. Policy makers have cut interest rates to a record low, but Latin America’s largest economy is still expected to contract by 5.7% this year, according to analysts surveyed by the central bank. Data this week showed the unemployment rate in the three months through June rose to 13.3%, the highest level in over three years.
Vaccine bets
As the pandemic rages, Brazil is considering extending emergency payments to informal workers past September, when they were due to expire, people with direct knowledge of the matter said this week. In the meantime, officials are also betting big on finding a vaccine.
On Thursday, Bolsonaro signed a bill granting 1.95 billion reais ($359 million) to acquire 100 million doses of a formulation being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and produce more of it locally starting in December. In parallel, the state of Sao Paulo is working with Sinovac’s CoronaVac, which could go into production in October if tests are successful. Brazil has also joined global tests of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE vaccines.
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While the search for the vaccine continues globally, Bolsonaro has doubled down on his defense of the use of antimalarial medication chloroquine and its sister drug hydroxichloroquine. Since being diagnosed with the virus in early July, Bolsonaro has attributed his mild symptoms and recovery to the drug, unproven against Covid-19. He often wields a box of the medication in his social media broadcasts.
His focus on the controversial drug and constant dismissal of the disease -- on Thursday, he lamented the high number of deaths but said people have to move on -- has led to repeated clashes with local governments. It has also made the response to the disease a heated and politicized matter: Public hospital doctors say they’re being pressured into handing out hydroxychloroquine by worried patients.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.