Brazil traversing worst moment of Covid-19 pandemic

Welcome to “Number of the Week,” where we choose a single figure that helps understand what is going on in Brazil. This week’s number helps explain why Brazil is facing its worst pandemic scenario to date:

36 consecutive days

Brazil registered its first Covid-19 case one year ago. While most of the world is now seeing coronavirus infections decrease, the pandemic is becoming even more severe in Brazil. For the past 36 days, the country’s seven-day rolling average of new daily deaths has remained above 1,000. Even during 2020’s coronavirus peaks, Brazil has never endured such a long sequence of heightened daily death tolls.

This week, Brazil reached the sad milestone of 250,000 deaths. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington forecast that the country’s death toll will hit 358,000 by June, if it...