Brazil may have 1 million daily cases of Covid in two weeks, scientists project

In two weeks, Brazil can reach one million people infected with Covid per day. The projection, made by the University of Washington (USA), considers that the cases are much higher than the official data and should more than double in 15 days.

The country is experiencing a blackout of numbers about the disease, so it is not known the size of the wave of contaminations driven by the omicron variant today. That’s because the Ministry of Health’s notification systems have been unstable for a month, after hacking attacks, and there is no comprehensive testing policy.

The university estimates that 468,000 people have been infected in Brazil this Friday alone (7), including those who did not undergo tests. The amount is almost nine times greater than the positive tests recorded by states in the last 24 hours (53,419, according to the consortium of press vehicles).

Following the projection, the country should reach 1 million infected on January 23 and a peak of 1.3 million in mid-February.

The estimate is ten times greater than the number recorded at the height of the disease in Brazil, in March last year, when there were almost 100,000 positive cases per day.

According to epidemiologist Fátima Marinho, a member of the network of researchers that sends Brazilian data to the University of Washington, the projection is based on a complex calculation, considering several factors for each country, and is quite reliable in the short term.

“This increase to 1 million in two weeks is plausible, because the model applies what is already known about the disease in the US and Europe, for example, which have very accurate numbers. In England the test is free at any pharmacy and goes straight for the government system”, he says.

According to her, this year the disease is expected to follow the same path as the last two years: an increase during the winter in the northern hemisphere, then an increase in transmissions in Brazil in January and February, with a peak in March.

“We are going to repeat it, as we have done every year. There is no reason for the scenario to be different from other years and other countries. It is impressive that the government does nothing, knowing in advance what will happen”, criticizes the UFMG professor (Universidade Federal of Minas Gerais).

The projected growth rate for deaths, however, is much lower. Calculations indicate that the country can reach 313 daily deaths from Covid in two weeks, just 12% more than the 279 deaths estimated for this Friday. Even so, the projection is much higher than the official record of the states, which was 148 in the last 24 hours.

According to experts, the lower lethality of the disease is linked to the lower severity of the ômicron variant and the advance of vaccination coverage in the country. Brazil has 78% of the population with at least one dose of the vaccine, 68% with the first complete immunization cycle and 13.4% with the booster.

The data recorded by the states indicate that, while the moving average of cases grew 477% in relation to the data of two weeks ago, the average of deaths remains stable, that is, it did not have variations greater than 15% in this period.

“Fortunately, we have the vaccine to prevent a tragedy like the one we saw last year, in terms of deaths. But if we want to control the situation and prevent new deaths from occurring, we need to know the number of cases. With the current policy of testing, we will not have this control”, says Domingos Alves, professor at the USP Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine.

For specialists, precisely because of the lack of testing in the country, the official data should not reach the projection. However, they say that even with the underreporting, the number of confirmed cases is expected to double by next week.

“The official data will never come even close to the real number of infected people because we have not tested. The information we will have in the coming days will only be on those people who became infected and had more severe symptoms and, therefore, were tested”, says Wallace Casaca, coordinator of Infotracker, a USP and Unifesp project that monitors the pandemic.

Experts explain that underreporting occurs mainly due to the lack of mass testing, which generally leads to the accounting of only moderate to severe symptomatic patients, and to a delay, or, often, the complete absence of the registration of cases.

Sanitary specialist Christovam Barcelos, one of the coordinators of Fiocruz’s MonitoraCovid19 platform, also draws attention to the huge bottleneck that has formed from the blackout of the notification systems since December 10. Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga promised to normalize the situation by next week.

“The blackout was not just the attack on the clouds. It is at the origin, delaying the entry of notifications in private and public health units. So even if all the sites come back, there is still a lot of dammed data. Therefore, in the coming weeks, we will see a explosion of cases that can also be false, because they are December numbers that were only typed in January”, he says.

He points out that an increase in infections has already been noticed since the beginning of December, although this has not been shown in official statistics. Data from private hospitals, high test positivity and even a questionnaire administered by Facebook to users indicated more people with symptoms at that time.

“This got worse especially with the end-of-year festivities, starting on December 20th. People forget that a party is not just a Christmas or New Year’s night, it’s a sequence of events and trips”, he recalls.

Although official data are not enough to measure the size of the outbreak, several locations in the country are already registering pressure on health systems and have resumed adopting emergency measures.

The government of Ceará, for example, suspended elective surgeries and the City of São Paulo returned to set up tents for patient care.