Brazil tops 1 million cases as coronavirus spreads inland
SAO PAULO – Brazil’s government confirmed Friday that the country has risen above 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases, second only to the United States.
The country’s health ministry said that the total now stood at 1,032,913, up more than 50,000 from Thursday. The ministry said the sharp increase was due to corrections of previous days’ underreported numbers.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro still downplays the risks of the virus after nearly 50,000 deaths from COVID-19 in three months, saying the impact of social isolation measures on the economy could be worse than the disease itself.
Specialists believe the actual number of cases in Brazil could be up to seven times higher than the official statistic. Johns Hopkins University says Brazil is performing an average of 14 tests per 100,000 people each day, and health experts say that number is up to 20 times less than needed to track the virus.
Official data show a downward trend of the virus in Brazil’s north, including the hard-hit region of the Amazon, a plateau in cases and deaths in the countries’ biggest cities near the Atlantic coast, but a rising curve in the south.
In the Brazilian countryside, which is much less prepared to handle a crisis, the pandemic is clearly growing. Many smaller cities have weaker health care systems and basic sanitation that’s insufficient to prevent contagion.
“There is a lot of regional inequality in our public health system and a shortage of professionals in the interior,” said Miguel Lago, executive director of Brazil’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health officials. “That creates many health care deserts with people going long distances to get attention. When they leave the hospital, the virus can go with them.”
The cattle-producing state of Mato Grosso was barely touched by the virus when it hit the nation’s biggest cities in March. Sitting far from the coast, between the Bolivian border and Brazil’s capital of Brasilia, its 3.3 million residents led a mostly normal life until May. But now its people live under lockdown, and meat producers have dozens of infected workers.
In Tangará da Serra, a city of 103,000 people in Mato Grosso, the mayor decided Friday to forbid the sale of alcoholic drinks for two weeks as an incentive for people to stay home. Fábio Junqueira said the measure was needed after a spike in COVID-19 cases that filled 80% of the city’s 54 intensive care beds.
Outside Sao Paulo city, five regions of the state’s countryside will have to close shops starting Monday due to a rise in coronavirus cases.
Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s executive director, said at a news conference that Brazil needs to increase its efforts to stop the spread of infections.
“The epidemic is still quite severe in Brazil. I believe health workers are working extremely hard and under pressure to be able to deal with the number of cases that they see on a daily basis,” Ryan said. “Certainly the rise is not as exponential as it was previously, so there are some signs that the situation is stabilizing. But we’ve seen this before in other epidemics in other countries.”