RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The country set a new record of deaths in 24 hours (1,479), at a time when virtually all states still show high contagion levels, with a transmission rate of over 1. This means that each infected person is passing on the Covid-19 to more than one person, a rate higher than the mark that experts consider as a slowdown in contagion.
Amid the disturbing picture, there are occasional positive signs. The states of Ceará, Pernambuco, and Espírito Santo are starting to show a stabilizing trend in the recording of new coronavirus cases, says the Ministry of Health, notwithstanding the need to continue monitoring to analyze whether this condition is confirmed.
The three states singled out by the Ministry of Health came from a steep curve of new cases, and experienced a lower growth in the last two complete epidemiological weeks (between May 17th and 30th). “But we need to monitor its behavior over the next few weeks to see if the trend continues,” said Eduardo Macário, the Health Surveillance substitute.
Contrary to this potential deceleration, is Goiás, which had been showing a mild growth curve (with few cases compared to other states), but over the last two weeks cases jumped from 737 to 1208. All trends are carefully analyzed by Macário. He mentions the case of the Metropolitan Region of Manaus, which, after three weeks of stabilization, saw its cases rise again.
For the time being, the overall picture is that Brazil is experiencing a growing curve of new cases, despite the fact that the epidemic is showing different behavior and stages from end to end of the country. The North and Northeast regions are still the main focus of the novel coronavirus, but the epidemic is starting to spread to the South and Centerwest regions. The Southeast is also following the growth trend.
“The speed dynamic is around 1.5. Some states are in a more critical situation than others. But the main message is: regardless of the situation they are in, all states need to maintain measures,” Macário says, referring to the need to strengthen the health system, testing capacity and surveillance actions throughout the country.
Slowness and new pledges
But Brazil’s reaction to the epidemic is still fragile. One hundred days have passed since the first case was confirmed and actions announced at the start of the crisis have not come off paper onto practice. Mass testing strategies are slipping. The government says it has strengthened laboratories and that thousands of rapid tests have been distributed, yet concedes that it cannot account for a significant volume of results that would help provide a more accurate picture of the pandemic.
There are over 190,000 tests waiting in line for laboratory analysis. The Ministry of Health says the country is processing over 50,000 tests per week. But at the start of the crisis, the portfolio considered the need for 30,000 tests per day to have a more realistic dimension of the share of the population that was infected.
Since the start of the crisis, one of Brazil’s key assets pointed out by experts and public managers in facing the pandemic was the capacity and universality of the National Health Service (SUS).
The Brazilian health system is an international leader, boasting a robust basic care structure – which is the care provided at health posts and the monitoring of chronic diseases and patient follow-up by health agents.
But only now does the government announce more effective actions to use this structure strategically to fight the pandemic and create reference facilities for Covid-19. The facilities, if they come into practice, are a way to ensure safe health care and isolate the care of suspected and coronavirus cases from other diseases.
Next Monday, the government will start registering municipalities that wish to receive funding to implement care centers and community reference centers to tackle Covid-19, the latter specifically aimed at peripheral communities and favelas. These units should operate in health facilities or community reference centers (such as schools) adapted for the care of mild cases of Covid-19.
In addition to providing some assistance in the country’s underserved areas, the new services are part of a strategy to try to track suspected cases and prevent new infections, with selective quarantine guidance for those who have had contact with infected people. The Ministry of Health states that the qualification procedure for these units is fast, but a deadline has not been set for their operation.
For the time being, Brazil is struggling to determine the magnitude and intensity of the epidemic in the country. With over 4,000 deaths still under investigation, it is difficult to say whether the country has reached a peak of daily deaths and if so, when it occurred. The precarious but possible assessment comes from the daily reports of confirmed deaths, which have broken records over the past two days.
The Ministry of Health says it works only with actual data, and avoids presenting the projections it works with for the coming weeks. “I find it regrettable to talk about ranking,” Macário complained at the press conference when asked about the deferment in the disclosure of data on the very day that the country reported a daily record of death records.
The daily reports, previously released around 8 PM, recently began to come out only after 10 PM. The Ministry of Health says it is due to the work of checking data coming from the states. While cities are pondering their economic reopening, the novel coronavirus pandemic is still growing rapidly in Brazil. On Thursday, June 4th Brazil ranked third in the world in the death toll, surpassing Italy. There are now 614,941 cases and 34,021 deaths by Covid-19, a number of victims only lower than in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Source: El País