Brazil has exceeded 450 thousand dead and experts ad …

Brazil has exceeded 450,000 deaths from covid-19, according to the official report released on Tuesday. However, in this context, moments epidemiologists warn of the possibility of a third wave of the pandemic.

A total of 452,031 people have died from the virus in Brazil since March 2020, including 2,173 in the past 24 hours, when 73,453 new infections were also recorded.

Even if specialists believe that the real numbers are much higher, Brazil, with 212 million inhabitants, is the second country with the most deaths due to the pandemic in absolute numbers, behind the United States.

And in relative terms, with 215 deaths per 100,000 population, it is the hardest hit in the Americas and the southern hemisphere.

The average daily mortality, which in mid-April was over 3,000, stabilized for ten days at around 1,900 (1,854 on Tuesday).

But what worries epidemiologists the most is the increase in the weekly average of infections, from 56,928 on April 28 to 65,910 on Tuesday., something that will impact the number of deaths in the coming weeks, according to projections.

Since the start of the pandemic, 16,194,209 cases have been reported. The peak of infections may be related to easing of restrictions adopted by various Brazilian states last month, when deaths began to decline.

According to the latest newsletter from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), a benchmark public health institution, there is a real risk of a third wave, with an ascending epidemiological curve in eight of the 27 Brazilian states and stable in ten others.

The spread of the virus could be favored by the onset of winter, with a drop in temperatures, especially in the south of the country.

While, vaccination rate is still slow. So far, 42.7 million people have received one dose (20.14% of the population) and 21 million (9.9%) the second.

Added to this is concern over the variant first detected in India, found last week in six crew members of a Hong Kong-flagged freighter that docked in the northeastern state of Maranhao. . Although local transmission of the strain has not yet been confirmed, other states have reported suspected cases.

Threat of third wave does not seem to worry far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who took part in a caravan on Sunday with thousands of sympathetic motorcyclists in Rio de Janeiro. In the midst of a crowd and without a mask, assured that Brazil knows “the end of the pandemic” and criticized the restrictions adopted by state governors.

A senatorial commission in Brasilia is investigating whether the federal government has made any omissions in the management of the pandemic, which specialists have been pointing out since last year.