Despite public holidays and red phase, isolation does not exceed 51% in São Paulo

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – At its peak, social isolation in the city reached 50% on Easter Sunday, April 4th, lower than on Sunday, March 21st, when it reached 51% – on other days of the holiday, the rate did not exceed 47%. Since March, the state, which has been in red phase, registered 51% isolation on a religious day but failed to break the 47% barrier on the other days.

According to infectologists and epidemiologists, the minimum percentage of isolation should be 70% for the measure to contain the coronavirus spread effectively. The mega-holiday spanned ten days – from Friday, March 26, to Sunday, April 3 – and was adopted by the mayor of São Paulo, Bruno Covas (PSDB), and other mayors of the Greater São Paulo metropolitan area. During the period, the social isolation rate in the São Paulo capital ranged from 42% to 50% – in the previous seven days, the rates in the city ranged from 42% to 51%.

For specialists, some aspects may have hindered the increase in this rate even with the adoption of the holiday, such as the broad list of activities considered essential, the lack of federal coordination for social distancing policies, the difficulty in convincing the population to adhere to the rules, and the lack of monitoring on the streets to ensure the effectiveness of the measure.

According to Carlos Magno Fortaleza, an epidemiologist from Unesp and member of the São Paulo State Covid-19 Contingency Committee, the holiday is “a soft measure that depends a lot on people’s collaboration.” “There is a deliberate boycott by part of the population, which doesn’t believe and still boycotts so that the thing doesn’t work, stimulated by some opinion makers,” he says.

For the epidemiologist, a lockdown with the security forces’ ostensive presence on the streets would be a harder action, but capable of considerably increasing the isolation rate. “There is always the fear that the population will rebel, and there is the question that a lockdown needs sufficient police force. The army would be ideal, but the president has already said that it will not be used for this. We have a difficult situation in this regard,” he affirms.

According to him, the city in São Paulo state that best implemented measures of this type was Araraquara. “It did a real lockdown, preventing people from being in the streets. And the city has had, not surprisingly, a good result. Araraquara is going three, four days without having any deaths, while in other places we have deaths every day,” he says.

However, he ponders that the adoption of the red phase in the state was not useless, even though the isolation was lower than expected.

“The measures have not increased the rate as we would like, the target is 70%. But there is a clear slowdown in the number of new cases in the last week. It is still increasing, but very little, almost reaching a plateau. Before, we were in a clear acceleration and heading towards the collapse of the ICUs. Now we have a small reduction in the ICU population and the waiting period for beds”, he says.

Fortaleza defends continuing the measures so that they can be better analyzed. Still, he defends that less lenient actions should be implemented if they don’t prove to be enough. “We may have to move towards measures like interrupting public transportation and preventing people from circulating widely,” says the epidemiologist.

For the infectologist Jamal Suleiman, from Emílio Ribas hospital, the lack of incentive and financial help for people to stay at home, besides the absence of federal coordination, continue to be the main reasons for the difficulty in increasing isolation.

“The first thing that has to happen is more effective popular participation. As acute as this one we live in, that is the only way to stop the transmission. But you can’t lock a person at home and not guarantee their survival. If you shut down economic activity, compensation is needed. There is a disorganization of the central power, at no time has the federal government made any move actually to minimize this impact,” he affirms.

Besides this, according to him, a greater restriction of essential activities is missing. “At this moment, you need to define well what can work and what can’t work, but systematically we have seen noise in this area. Is church essential work? Obviously not. Nobody has any doubt that it is not an essential activity. People seek this in the courts, and they win. The federal disorganization only gives more room for this. No place that has restricted circulation did it this way,” he evaluates.

Other cities

In addition to São Paulo, several other Brazilian capitals have adopted more rigorous measures in recent weeks to stop the virus from spreading. In Rio de Janeiro, mayor Eduardo Paes also adopted a ten-day holiday. However, the other cities do not measure social isolation rates – the only capital to do so is São Paulo.

Source: Veja