The number of coronavirus cases in Brazil crossed 2 million, with around 76,000 deaths. President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive for the virus for the second time.
According to experts, Bolsonaro’s lack in taking the initiative to tackle the pandemic from the beginning, not imposing mask-wearing or social distancing guidelines are to be blamed for such high numbers. A major reason besides this is that millions of Brazilians live in hutment kind of settlements, where social distancing is not possible. Bolsonaro also prematurely ordered reopening of the economy, which led to more cases of positives.
A lot of them are also daily-wagers, who depend solely on their earnings to provide for their families.
Three months after the first case of COVID-19 was reported, it has recorded more than 1,000 daily deaths in a gruesome plateau. The virus is currently peaking in the largest Latin-American country.
Brazil is currently fighting the virus under the guidance of an interim health minister untrained in the field. Brazil’s roughly 7,000 COVID-19 deaths in each of the last seven weeks are equal to several aeroplanes packed with Brazilians crashing every day, former health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta was quoted as saying in an AP report.
Brazil is the second worst-hit country in the world after the US.
According to a model created by professors from several Brazilian academic institutions, based on the number of confirmed deaths, Brazil was expected to have10 million cases of COVID-19. “The virus would have been difficult to stop anyway,” said Adriano Massuda, a health care administration specialist and professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Sao Paulo university.
The virus has begun declining in places where the onset was early and is reaching states and cities that were previously spared.
