Brazil could break the record for cases in a week

Brazil is set to break the record for the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in a week since the start of the pandemic. With 54,771 new cases on Friday (June 19) alone, the 7-day rolling average rose to around 29,000 more cases per day. 

After reaching the mark of 1 million confirmed cases on Friday, Brazil is inching closer to the 50,000-dead mark. Without considering the vast amount of cases and deaths likely ignored by official counts, the mortality rate of the coronavirus in Brazil hovers at around 5 percent. But lethality varies significantly depending on regional economic conditions.

The number of new deaths is edging closer to the weekly record of over 7,200 — set early in June. In the state of São Paulo, the country’s Covid-19 epicenter, the past week has been the deadliest since the beginning of the outbreak, and that is even before Saturday’s figures are confirmed. It has also been nearly two weeks since the state began reopening its economy. 

According to estimates by newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the coronavirus death rate is much higher in the North — where 45.5 per 100,000 people died of Covid-19. In the South region, the rate drops to just 3.4 per 100,000. “In Europe, the determining factor for the deaths was age, in Brazil, it has been the address,” the coordinator of the Sustainable Cities Institute, Jorge Abrahão told the newspaper.

Race also plays an important role — as the socioeconomic conditions of non-whites in Brazil are much tougher. A survey by epidemiologist Jesem Orellana, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in the Amazon, compared lethality by race group in Manaus — the first Brazilian city to experience a full-scale collapse of its healthcare system due to the pandemic. His findings showed that, over the two most critical weeks of the crisis, only 12 percent of the Covid-19 victims in the city were white.

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