Brazil registered 2,513 Covid deaths and 75,445 infections in 24 hours (May 18)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil, one of the countries hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic globally, registered in the last 24 hours 2,513 new deaths due to coronavirus and 75,445 new infections, thus exceeding 439,000 victims and 15.7 million cases since the beginning of the health crisis.

According to the bulletin released on Tuesday by the Ministry of Health, the country has accumulated 439,050 deaths and 15,732,836 cases of Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in February last year.

The numbers confirm Brazil, with its 212 million inhabitants, as the second country in the world in number of victims, behind the United States, and the third in number of cases, only surpassed by the U.S. and India.

The figures reported on Tuesday jumped from Monday’s (786 deaths and 29,916 cases); this was expected since, by the Ministry’s own admission, the numbers usually fall on Sundays and Mondays, when there are fewer officials processing data on weekends, and rise on Tuesdays, when the statistics are updated.

In any case, the number of deaths from coronavirus in Brazil has been falling slowly and gradually after the peak of the second wave of the pandemic, which the country registered in March and April of this year when it reached records of more than 4,000 deaths per day and 100,000 cases per day.

In the last seven days, the average number of deaths rose from 1,901 per day on Monday, the lowest in the last two months (from 1,894 deaths per day on March 16), to 1,930 per day on Tuesday.

However, the average number of deaths on Tuesday is 3.2% lower than a week ago (1,993 deaths per day on May 11) and 18.5% lower than fourteen days ago (2,367 deaths per day on May 4).

The average number of infections is far from its peak (76,545 cases per day on 23 March) but has increased again in recent days.

AVERAGE NUMBER OF INFECTIONS ROSE 8.4% IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS

The average number of infections in 7 days stood at 64,304 per day on Tuesday, an increase of 5.7% compared to the average of seven days ago (60,831 daily infections on May 11) and 8.4% days ago (59,332 cases per day on May 4).

According to the Ministry of Health, of the 15.7 million infected in Brazil, some 14.2 million, 90.6% of the total, have already recovered and have been discharged. At the same time, 1.05 million are still under medical care, equivalent to 6.6%.

Data released on Tuesday indicate that Covid-19 has a mortality rate in Brazil of 208.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, an incidence of 7,486.6 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, and a fatality rate of 2.8% of those infected.

Specialists assure that Brazil’s mortality and infection figures will remain at the current high levels until the Ministry of Health manages to advance more rapidly in the vaccination process.

With 90 million vaccines already distributed by AstraZeneca, Sinovac, and Pfizer Laboratories, Brazil has administered 58.7 million. At least 39.3 million Brazilians have been immunized with the first dose, equivalent to 18.5% of the population, and 19.4 million have received the two doses (9.2%).

Due to Brazil’s delay in buying the vaccines, the slow progress of immunization was one of the issues about which former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo was questioned on Tuesday in the Senate committee investigating the Government’s omissions and failures in dealing with the pandemic.

Araújo blamed the Ministry of Health for Brazil’s delay in joining the Covax initiative to obtain more vaccines and denied having made ideological criticisms of China, even though he called Covid a “communavirus”.