Copa America in Brazil: How are your COVID-19 infections compared to the rest of South America

Brazil, announced this Monday as the venue for the 2021 Copa América and one of the three most affected countries in the world by the coronavirus pandemic, currently has a infection rate slightly lower than the South American average, but very far from an optimal health scenario.

The most populous country in South America has recorded a total of 16.5 million confirmed cases, according to the latest government bulletin. Although the death rate registered a moderate decline in the last month, the same is not true with contagions who had a slight increase in the same period, from a daily average of 60,276 cases a month ago to 61,695 confirmed cases as of Sunday.

Despite the situation and the alerts from specialists on the arrival of a third wave in the coming weeks, some regions of the country continue to relax distancing measures to prevent the spread of the virus. Before knowing the realization of the America’s Cup in the country, Rio de Janeiro once again allowed the “samba rodas”, one of its most traditional musical encounters, to find its audience from this weekend. end, maintaining the required biosecurity measures.

The second wave of the virus, developed in 2021, was much deadlier than the first: from January to April, the death toll from COVID rose from 200,000 to 400,000. Epidemiologists attribute further rise in infections to rapid reopening of the economy and fear looming third wave, with a president like Jair Bolsonaro, a denier and opposed to strict measures. Meanwhile, economists rule out true normalization without an effective mass vaccination campaign.

Regional comparison

To paint the regional picture, the comparison is measured in infections per million people, not in absolute terms. In this indicator, according to portal data OurWorldInData, Brazil records a weekly average of 290 infections per day. This figure is lower than the regional average, which is 315 infections., and the graph shows a plateau of slight rise for the past month.

This list is managed by Uruguay, with 1,085 cases, followed by the two countries that would initially host the football tournament: Argentina (676) and Colombia (423).

Further behind are Paraguay (394) and Chile (355), which sounded like possible substitutes. After Brazil, there are Bolivia (230), Peru (96), Ecuador (56) and Venezuela (47).

The vaccination campaign

Although Brazil has over 100 million people still unvaccinated, it is per capita one of the three countries with the most immunized citizens.

The country uses the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac formulas and 21% of the population has already received at least one dose, which is why it is only behind Chile (54%) and Uruguay (50%).

Thus, it also appears ahead of Argentina (20%) and Colombia (12%), the next in the list.

Conmebol has not yet decided in which venues this edition of the Cup will take place. The tournament played in 2019 in the South American giant took place in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Salvador de Bahia.

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