(CNN) – For the sixth month in a row, the city of Rio de Janeiro has recorded more deaths than births, a devastating indicator of the incessant Covid-19 crisis in Brazil.
Rio de Janeiro, the second most populous city in the country, registered 36,437 deaths in March, 16% more than the 32,060 new births for the month, according to the national Civil Registry. It was not the only one; At least 10 other Brazilian cities with populations of more than half a million people also recorded more deaths than births last month.
A woman places a rose on a mattress symbolizing Covid-19 victims during a protest outside a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 24, 2021.
Cities across the country have been hit hard by a recent spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths, driven in part by new variants believed to be more contagious, as well as some Brazilians’ disdain for distancing precautions. Social. The grim death-to-birth ratio is yet another picture of a national crisis that federal and local officials have largely failed to contain after more than a year of pandemic.
According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, 77,515 people across Brazil have died due to covid-19 in the last month and more than 2 million new cases have been diagnosed. All but three of Brazil’s 27 states and the federal district are seeing intensive care unit occupancy rates of 80% or more, according to data from state health secretaries.
Vaccination in Brazil has been slow, plagued from the beginning by internal political disputes and difficulties in obtaining doses. Only 6.3 million people, about 3% of the population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the Brazilian Ministry of Health. In the same statement, the ministry said that 21.1 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, but that at least 1.5 million of them face delays for their second injection.
Both the Coronavac and AstraZeneca vaccines, which the country depends on, require two doses. The Health Ministry has not offered any reason why some Brazilians have not received their second doses. However, local media have raised issues of confusion or misconceptions among the public about the importance of the second dose and the difficulties low-income Brazilians face in accessing vaccination centers.
As long as the coronavirus circulates uncontrollably, new mutations could emerge, experts say. The variants of coronavirus existing in the country are already raising the alarm; The P.1 variant first identified in Brazil is driving an increase in cases in neighboring countries and led France this week to suspend flights to and from the country.
President Jair Bolsonaro has embraced vaccines, and recently approached Russia for a possible deal on the Sputnik V vaccine. But critics wish he would apply the same urgency to other fronts in the battle against the coronavirus. The president has repeatedly downplayed the danger from COVID-19, which he once referred to as a “little flu,” and insists that the country’s economic health must take precedence over lockdown measures.
In public statements last week, Bolsonaro vowed never to accept a national lockdown strategy to contain the coronavirus, despite calls from the United Nations and the respected Brazilian medical research center Fiocruz. He seemed indifferent to the worrying death toll and the increase in cases, which he called “spilled milk” during an April 7 event in the southern Brazilian city of Foz de Iguazú.
We are not going to cry over spilled milk. We continue to experience a pandemic, which in part is being used politically not to defeat the virus, but to try to overthrow the president. We are all responsible for what is happening in Brazil, “said Bolsonaro. «What country in the world did not see deaths? Unfortunately, people die everywhere.
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