Society

Brazil loses USD 2.5 billion a year from Covid-19 deaths

Rio's Caju Cemetery was one of the many overburdened by the sheer amount of Covid deaths in 2020 and 2021. Photo: Jorge Hely Veiga/Shutterstock

At 34 years old, young Brazilian scientist Nilton Barreto dos Santos was studying how the coronavirus affects humans’ central nervous system. A part of one of the University of São Paulo’s most prestigious research teams, he was preparing for an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. This year, Nilton was infected by the very disease he was studying. He spent two months in intensive care and died in August.

Naomi Munataka, 64, was born in Hiroshima, Japan, just a few years after the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb. She moved to São Paulo with her family at the age of two and began studying music at age four. Naomi worked her way up to becoming the principal Maestra of the internationally renowned São Paulo Symphony Orchestra choir. She...

Amanda Audi

Amanda Audi is a journalist specializing in politics and human rights. She is the former executive director of Congresso em Foco and worked as a reporter for The Intercept Brasil, Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo, Gazeta do Povo, Poder360, among others. In 2019, she won the Comunique-se Award for best-written media reporter and won the Mulher Imprensa award for web journalism in 2020