The health crisis is raging in Brazil and it is not over.

The country became on Saturday the second country in the world after the United States to exceed the threshold of 500,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Importantly, the recent increase in daily deaths seems to confirm the imminence of a third wave.

The latest report from the Ministry of Health, underestimated according to many epidemiologists, reports 500,800 deaths, including 2,301 recorded in the last 24 hours.

This week, the weekly average of daily deaths rose above 2,000 for the first time since May 10.

The country of 212 million inhabitants also has 82,288 new contaminations on Saturday alone, bringing the total to 17,883,750.

Open restaurants and bars

"The third wave is coming, but the vaccination, which could make the difference, is still too slow, and the authorities do not seem to want to take further restrictive measures", explains Ethel Maciel, epidemiologist at the University. of Espirito Santo. In the country's major cities, life seems to have almost returned to normal, with restaurants, bars and shops open and large numbers of unmasked people in the streets. The situation is however critical in 19 of the 27 Brazilian states, with more than 80% occupancy of intensive care beds, and 90% in eight of them.

Contrary to what has been observed in Europe, there has been no real lull between the waves.

“We have the impression that we never really got out of the first wave.

It seems that the pandemic in Brazil behaves like a marathon runner and not like a sprinter who accelerates suddenly and loses speed immediately afterwards ”, estimates Alexandre da Silva, specialist in public health and doctor of the University of Sao Paulo.

Protests against Jair Bolsonaro

Several large deliveries of vaccines have recently arrived in the country, including that of Pfizer, and some cities have been able to boost their immunization campaigns, including Rio and Sao Paulo. But only 29% of the population has received at least one dose and 11.36% is fully vaccinated. The vaccination campaign began in mid-January, with vaccines from AstraZeneca and the Chinese Coronavac.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who had yet criticized vaccines so much, promised to immunize the entire population by the end of the year, a goal difficult to achieve according to specialists.

In the meantime, anti-Solonaro demonstrations took place on Saturday in many towns with cries of "Dehors Bolsonaro", "Government of hunger and unemployment", "Vaccine now" or "Vaccine in the arm and food on the plate" .

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  • Brazil

  • Covid 19

  • World

  • Coronavirus

  • Jair Bolsonaro