Already going through one of the highest death marks in the pandemic, Brazil is now gearing for the threat of a third wave of Covid-19, fueled by vaccination delays and a lack of covid containment measures.
Till now, each coronavirus wave has been successively worse in Brazil, peaking at a weekly average of approx. 1,000 deaths per day in July 2020 during the first wave and 3,000 deaths per day last April during the second wave.
The coronavirus curve has since turned down, with an average of approx 1,600 deaths per day over the past week, and Brazilians have largely turned back to business as usual. Covid-19 or coronavirus has already claimed more than 470,000 lives in Brazil, after the United States of America
The South American country’s per capita death toll counts more than 220 per 100,000 inhabitants and is one of the world’s highest.
But many Brazilians seem unconcerned by the threat of a new surge in the cases of covid-19—not least far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who continues to regularly defy expert advice on containing the spread of coronavirus.
Infectious disease specialist Jose David Urbaez said “Brazil has taken an unprecedented health catastrophe and turned it into something normal. The majority of people are acting like there’s no pandemic.”
Most experts say a new surge in Brazil should not even be called a “third wave of coronavirus,” as the first and second never really subsided.
