Brazil surpassed this Sunday the 24 million infections of covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, after registering 135,080 new cases in the last 24 hours. In addition, the average number of infected of the last week rose again until reaching a new mark for the sixth day in a row.
According to the official information provided by the Ministry of Health of the neighboring country, from February 2020 to this part, 24,044,255 positives were detected. In parallel, they were counted during the last day 296 new deaths, which raised the absolute number to 623,097 victims of the coronavirus.
Brazil is one of the countries where covid-19 hit the world hardest. In recent weeks, the Ómicron variant has become the predominant one and has considerably increased the average number of cases. In detail, the strain that scientists say originated in South Africa caused 95 percent of the latest infections.
Currently, the South American giant has 1,571,613 cases of people with confirmed covid-19, who are in the clinical follow-up stage. The rest of the positives detected, almost 91 percent of the total, that is, 21,849,545 people, have already gone through the disease and recovered, according to figures provided by the Brazilian health portfolio.
A vaccination center in Curitiba, in November 2021, when Ómicron had not yet entered the country. Photo: Ministry of Health Brazil
The data for this Sunday may be much higher to those disclosed by the Ministry of Health, because some regional governments generally do not update the statistics on weekends or partially register them due to the lack of officials processing the numbers.
The average continues to grow
The average number of infections in the last week was this Sunday at 149,085 daily, setting a record for the sixth consecutive day. The average number of infections has been setting consecutive daily records since Tuesday, when it was 83,205 cases per day.
Since then it has grown to an average of almost 15,000 infections per day, reaching almost 150,000 cases per day this Sunday, double the average recorded at the worst moments of the second wave of the pandemic, on June 23 last year. , when Brazil recorded 77,328 new infections per day.
The arrival of Ómicron in the country and its rapid spread caused the average number of infections to multiply by almost 50 in the last month, from 3,090 cases per day on December 23, to 149,085 daily infections this Sunday.
During the last week, the increase in the average number of positive cases was almost 15,000 infections per day.
The more than 623,000 deaths and 24 million cases accumulated since the beginning of the crisis confirm Brazil as the second country in number of deaths from covid-19 in the world, after the United States, and as the third in infections, after that North American country and India.
The average number of deaths multiplied by three in less than a month, also due to the action of Ómicron: from 92 victims per day on December 26 to 293 deaths per day this Sunday. Today’s average is the highest in almost three months, since the one measured last November 1 (303 daily deaths).
According to official figures, São Paulo is the Brazilian state with the highest number of deaths from coronavirus, with 156,493. Further back in this statistic are Rio de Janeiro (69,677), Minas Gerais (56,962), Paraná (40,988) and Rio Grande do Sul (36,640).
Before the arrival of the omicron, Brazil had managed to reduce the number of deaths and cases from covid to its lowest in 20 months, since last December the figures were almost at the same levels as at the start of the pandemic. This was linked to the progress of the vaccination campaign, which was deepened this weekend with a special campaign in the Northern Region of the country.
Until this Saturday, a minimum of 150.5 million Brazilians, 70.66% of the 213 million inhabitants of the country, had the complete cycle of immunization (two doses or the single dose vaccine).
With information from EFE.