RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Covid-19’s high contagion rate, coupled with the fact that leaves the vast majority of sufferers with minor or almost no symptoms, can be slightly confusing when we try to get an idea of how dangerous it really is.
Some in Brazil have compared the current pandemic with diseases that are common in Brazil, such as dengue and tuberculosis, or to outbreaks such as that of Zika and Chikungunya. These comparisons are complex and sometimes misleading as comparing diseases is frequently like comparing apples and oranges: many are very different from each other and their health and social impact is complex and cannot be reduced to mere numbers, especially as numbers can be unreliable and misleading at times.
That said, we can look at some basic facts about different diseases and outbreaks and compare them to Covid-19 to give us at least some idea of the relative danger of this illness.
Last year Brazil had 1,544,987 cases of dengue, a huge 488% increase on the figures for 2018. 782 people died from the illness in 2019. This compares with over 200 deaths from Covid-19 since the first recorded case in Brazil on February 26th, a little over a month ago. In Spain and Italy, countries with less than a third of the population of Brazil, and generally far superior health systems, we are now seeing fatalities of 800 to 900 per day.
So, as regards dengue, Covid-19 is obviously incalculably more dangerous, capable of killing as many in one day as dengue does in a whole year. Obviously we would hope that the situation does not get so bad in Brazil, but it is likely that it will.
Last year there were about 10,000 cases of Zika and just 3 associated deaths. This is obviously much less than Covid-19 has already caused in Brazil on some days. Although Zika is present in all states (with the possible exception of Acre), rates of infection are relatively low, but there is still an alert for expectant mothers as the disease has been associated with microcephaly in new-born babies. This goes to show that death rates are not the only relevant factor when it comes to disease.
Chikungunya rates increased in 2019, giving a total of 130,000 cases last year and 92 deaths. Again we can see the relatively low numbers of deaths compared to Coronavirus.
Tuberculosis is a different case, with 4,490 deaths in 2018, making it much more dangerous than the previously mentioned mosquito-borne illnesses, and much higher than the number of deaths already occurred in Brazil due to Covid-19.
However, when we consider that the USA, Spain, and Italy have already had more deaths than this, we see that, unfortunately ,Covid-19 is likely to dwarf even tuberculosis deaths.
Finally, H1N1: this flu had over 50,000 confirmed cases in Brazil and 2,098 deaths. Again, while this is high it is likely to be outstripped by Covid-19.
Deaths from the novel coronavirus will only increase. Projections of deaths in Brazil are in the several hundreds of thousands in the worst case scenario, and over 40,000 in best case. Hopefully, fatalities will be kept to a minimum, but we can see clearly that, although fortunately most people do not have serious symptoms, Covid-19 will kill far more people in Brazil this year than many of the most well-known infectious and mosquito-carried diseases combined.