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Brazil Faces Somber Covid-19 Milestone at 100,000 Deaths – The Wall Street Journal
ELDORADO, Brazil—Brazil’s death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 100,000 in a somber milestone for the country as the disease spreads widely beyond the megacities where it first gained a toehold and tears through smaller towns and rural areas.The only other nation to experience that number of deaths so far is the U.S. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro,…
ELDORADO, Brazil—Brazil’s death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 100,000 in a somber milestone for the country as the disease spreads widely beyond the megacities where it first gained a toehold and tears through smaller towns and rural areas.
The only other nation to experience that number of deaths so far is the U.S. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has backed limited measures to control the new coronavirus, saying stricter public-health rules would do too much economic harm, something his opponents dispute.
Latin America is now a global hot spot, having recorded more than 213,000 deaths, nearly 30% of the world total. World Health Organization figures show the region accounts for a third of new virus cases documented globally each day, even though it has just 8% of the planet’s population.
Family members carry the coffin of a Covid-19 victim at Vila Formosa cemetery in São Paulo.
Photo:
Dado Galdieri for The Wall Street Journal
Eldorado, where the disease has surged.
On Saturday, the Brazilian health ministry said that 905 people had died in the previous 24 hours, pushing the national total toll to 100,477. The country accounts for roughly half of Latin America’s deaths and confirmed cases. The country’s continent-sized hinterland accounted for nearly 60% of known new infections last week, according to the Health Ministry. And while it took the virus nearly three months to kill 50,000 here, the death toll doubled in just 47 days, underscoring the illness’s expanding reach.
Here in Eldorado and in neighboring towns and cities in the Vale do Ribeira, around 125 miles south of São Paulo, the disease has surged, with infections and deaths up more than sixfold since the start of June, according to local health officials, overwhelming hospital intensive-care units.
Some residents of the area, where Mr. Bolsonaro grew up and where he is widely admired, said they felt blindsided by the arrival of the disease and its destructiveness, in part because the president has played down the dangers, likening it to influenza.
A Covid-19 patient list. Hospitals have been filling up with the critically ill.
Covid-19 patients at a hospital in Registro.
“If this was only a flu, we would not be reaching the mark of 100,000 deaths,” said Leodete Martins, whose 63-year-old husband, Cristiano Martins, a bar owner, died recently of Covid-19. He was the seventh in his town, Pariquera-Açu, to succumb to the disease.
Mr. Martins’s 27-year-old daughter Jessica, who along with her mother recovered from Covid-19, directed her ire toward Mr. Bolsonaro as she showed a photo of her late father on her phone. “He confused the population,” she said of the president. “We have seen a country divided by the ones that believed that this was only a flu and the others.”
Up and down the valley, an area of gently rolling hills nestled between Atlantic forests and banana plantations, the virus has spread through communities of working-class agricultural workers, including third-generation Japanese-Brazilians.
A large roadside sign outside Eldorado, which has a population of about 16,000, reads: “Attention tourists and visitors, don’t come to Eldorado, we are in quarantine.”
As hospitals have filled up, doctors have had to transfer critically ill patients to other parts of the state while authorities struggle to boost capacity. Local officials complain that the federal government has been slow to send funding for medical equipment and supplies.
They say they are also waiting for new social-distancing protocols and other public-health guidelines.
Heavy Toll
Brazil is set to join the U.S. in reaching 100,000 deaths from Covid-19.
Cumulative confirmed Covid-19 deaths by country, days since the first death
U.S.
150,000
U.S. reaches 100,000 deaths
in 89 days
100,000
Brazil
Mexico
50,000
U.K.
India
1
50
100
150
Days since the first death
Cumulative confirmed Covid-19 deaths by country, days since the first death
U.S.
150,000
U.S. reaches 100,000 deaths
in 89 days
100,000
Brazil
Mexico
50,000
U.K.
India
1
50
100
150
Days since the first death
Cumulative confirmed Covid-19 deaths by country, days since the first death
U.S.
150,000
U.S. reaches 100,000 deaths
in 89 days
100,000
Brazil
Mexico
50,000
U.K.
India
1
50
100
150
Days since the first death
Cumulative confirmed Covid-19 deaths by country, days since the first death
U.S.
150,000
U.S. reaches 100,000 deaths
in 89 days
100,000
Brazil
Mexico
50,000
U.K.
India
1
50
100
150
Days since the
first death
Mr. Bolsonaro declined to comment. In an email, the Health Ministry said it has closely followed the pandemic and has provided equipment and tests and hired health professionals to help fight it all over the country.
As in the U.S., where President
Trump
has clashed with his political adversaries over the economic costs of quarantine measures, Brazil has been embroiled in a similar national debate over health priorities and the economy.
“Without salaries and jobs, people die,” Mr. Bolsonaro said in a recent speech, while criticizing social-distancing measures ordered by some local and state authorities.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s critics say the president is wrong about what is really hurting the economy.
Hospital workers in Registro receive medical supplies.
A grave digger waits for his shift to start at Vila Formosa cemetery.
“The president has shifted the debate and is creating a false polarization,” said Miguel Lago, executive director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies, a policy group in Rio de Janeiro. “The economic crisis is a result of the pandemic, not because of the response to the pandemic.”
Mr. Lago said a lack of coordination between federal, state and municipal governments in Brazil was impeding the response to the virus’s spread in the countryside, where health-care infrastructure tends to be weaker. About 10% of Brazilians live in what are called “clinical deserts,” remote regions without access to intensive care units or respirators, he said.
Authorities in the towns of Vale do Ribeira say they have had no bigger challenge than dealing with public statements by Mr. Bolsonaro, who said recently that he is recovering after testing positive for the coronavirus last month.
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In Eldorado, 16-year-old Guilherme Julio said he believed Mr. Bolsonaro when it came to the coronavirus and saw no need to wear a mask.
“It is really a small flu,” he said, sitting on a park bench while taking a break from riding his bike. “Several people are getting it, but only a few are dying. It’s only the flu.”
Gilson Fantin, mayor of Registro, Vale do Ribeira’s largest municipality with 60,000 people, said he is having trouble getting residents to adhere to social-distancing guidelines.
Earlier this month, a video circulated on social media of dozens of young people in Registro gathered for a block party, irritating Mr. Fantin and his aides. Authorities are looking to make sure a second party, planned for the coming days, never takes place.
“In Brazil, many people don’t like to follow rules,” Mr. Fantin said. “Then, the leader of the nation says it is nothing, so how do you deal with that?”
Write to Luciana Magalhaes at Luciana.Magalhaes@wsj.com and Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com
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