Via BBC News Brasil: Coronavirus: against the world, Brazil eases quarantine before reaching peak death. Excerpt from the Google translation:
Those who watch the news may think that the new coronavirus pandemic is experiencing two different moments at the same time in Brazil.
One is the drastic moment of seeing that the disease continues to kill more and more people. This is what the successive records of cases and deaths by covid-19 released by the Ministry of Health in recent days point to. Brazil is already the second country in cases, with more than half a million, and the third in deaths, which exceed 30 thousand.
The other is the moment to think that the worst is over, that the pandemic seems to be under control, judging by the various Brazilian states that are easing their quarantines.
It is true that many countries are also following, or have already followed, the path of easing isolation measures.
But the vast majority of these countries only adopted flexibility measures after the number of new cases and deaths began to fall, explains epidemiologist Antonio Moura da Silva, professor at the Department of Public Health at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA) - countries like China , Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France.
Brazil is easing the quarantine while the numbers are still increasing and not knowing if the pandemic has already peaked. "It's insanity," says Silva.
Brazil does not meet WHO criteria
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends six criteria for easing social isolation. But Brazil still does not meet some of them.
The new cases must be sporadic and concentrated in certain places - and at a level that does not overburden the health system.
A country must also conduct mass tests to identify the cases and their contacts, and isolate and treat everyone.
In particular, it is necessary to protect places that are more vulnerable to outbreaks, such as slums, for example, and take measures to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus in workplaces.
And also try to prevent the import and export of cases and ensure that the population is aware and committed to actions to combat the pandemic.
The Blavatnik School of Governance, from the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, evaluates 170 countries in four of these criteria - prevention at work and in the most vulnerable places are excluded - and gives a score between 0 and 1 for each country.
The further away from note 1, the less prepared a country is to ease social distance. Brazil's score at the moment is 0.6.
The country is doing well in two criteria: the prevention of imported and exported cases, because the borders are closed, and the awareness of the population, even though the isolation has left something to be desired.
The problem is the explosion of new cases and deaths and the lack of a national policy for testing, investigating contagions and isolating cases.
According to Covidly.com, on Friday morning Brazil has recorded 618,554 cases, 31,845 of them in the past 24 hoours. Deaths now total 34,072; 1,479 were reported in the past 24 hours.
