Covid-19: Brazil has passed the milestone of 500,000 dead

Published on : 06/19/2021 – 22:57

Brazil, the second country most bereaved by Covid-19 behind the United States, crossed the threshold of 500,000 deaths on Saturday, June 19, announced the Minister of Health.

“500,000 lives lost due to the pandemic affecting our Brazil and the world,” tweeted Marcelo Queiroga, without specifying the results of the last 24 hours. As of Friday, his ministry had recorded 498,499 deaths, with a daily average of more than 2,000 deaths in the past seven days.

According to the Media Consortium, which brings together the country’s main media groups and draws up a daily assessment based on reports from regional governments, 500,022 deaths were recorded on Saturday afternoon.

The Ministry of Health’s daily tally is usually released around 9 p.m. GMT. More than 60% of deaths (303,550) have been recorded since the start of the year.

The risk of a third wave is approaching

Brazil, which has 212 million inhabitants, experienced a second wave at the start of the year with more than 4,000 deaths per day. He fears he will be hit by a third wave as the number of infections has spiked again.

According to the latest weekly report from the Fiocruz Foundation, a benchmark entity in medical research, Brazil is experiencing a “critical” situation, with “a high plateau (of deaths) and the possibility of a worsening in the coming weeks. with the onset of winter “in the southern hemisphere.

>> See also: Covid-19 in Brazil: young people, prime targets for the Brazilian variant

The occupancy rate of beds in intensive care units exceeds 80% in 19 of the country’s 27 states and 90% in eight of them, Fiocruz said.

Experts are worried about the slowness of the vaccination campaign, the spread of more aggressive variants and the lack of preventive measures on the part of President Jair Bolsonaro, opposed to confinement and the wearing of a mask.

Brazilians in the streets to denounce the management of the health crisis

In addition, thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday in many cities of Brazil to denounce the management of the Covid-19 pandemic by the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, accusing him of having delayed buying vaccines for the population and criticizing the wearing of masks.

The organizers of this day of protest have promised to break attendance records. In Rio de Janeiro or Brasilia, however, the crowd on Saturday morning seemed less than in previous anti-Bolsonaro protests on May 29.

For his part, the Minister of Health Marcelo Queiroga indicated in his tweet that he was working “tirelessly to vaccinate all Brazilians as soon as possible and to change this scenario which has afflicted us for more than a year”.

According to official data, 29% of the population has received an injection and only 11.36% is fully vaccinated.

With AFP and Reuters