Brazil: Coronavirus Cases Increase Among Unvaccinated People

The slow deployment of Brazil’s vaccination campaign appears to have reduced the rate of deaths among the elderly in the South American nation, according to death certificate data, but the ravages of Coronavirus continue to increase due to infections among young people. that have not yet been inoculated.

People over the age of 80 accounted for a quarter of the coronavirus deaths recorded in the country in February, but less than a fifth of those reported in March, according to information provided Tuesday to The Associated Press by Arpen- Brazil, an association that represents thousands of notaries that register the death certificates of Brazil.

Yet relatively few people, except the elderly, have been vaccinated against the coronavirus: Fewer than 9 million of Brazil’s 210 million residents have received both doses of the vaccine, according to Our World in Data, a website research.

Confirmed coronavirus cases among all age groups increased 70% between December and March. Reported infections rose from 1.3 million in December to 1.5 million in January, to decline to 1.36 million in February and rebound to 2.25 million in March.

However, the number of deaths tripled among people aged 20 to 59 from February to March, with 23,366 deaths, according to notaries.

Gustavo Renato Fiscarelly, president of Arpen-Brasil, said the figures showed the importance of vaccines, as well as the danger of lowering our guard. “It is necessary that young people take precautions, since they have been proportionally more affected by the number of deaths.”

Health experts said that such lack of care follows a similar pattern that has been observed across the continent.

“We are not acting like a region going through an outbreak that is getting worse,” said Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, last week, complaining that the number of weekly deaths from coronavirus in the region was superior to any other time in 2020.

“Despite the current infections in many places, restrictions have been relaxed. The crowds have returned and people are gathering indoors and traveling by public transport, often without masks, “he said.

Experts complain that even Brazilians who want to isolate themselves are often forced to go out to work because government aid payments to keep people at home dropped significantly in the first months of the year.

Brazil’s vaccination campaign has suffered several delays, but President Jair Bolsonaro has ignored requests from health experts and some governors to order a nationwide lockdown in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

In the absence of national restrictions, people who have not been vaccinated remain vulnerable to the Brazilian variant of the coronavirus that has spread rapidly throughout the country and in Latin America.

Local leaders have struggled to implement restrictions while Bolsonaro urges citizens to ignore them.

Brazil has reported nearly 375,000 deaths from the coronavirus, the second highest in the world behind the United States. Almost half of them have occurred so far in 2021. The seven-day average of deaths exceeded 3,000, although the figure has fallen slightly in recent days.