The country’s 210 million other people have reported an average of more than 1,000 pandemic deaths since last May and reported 99,572 on Friday night.
The Department of Health said there had been a total of 2,962,442 infections shown with the new coronavirus; deaths and infections occur only in the United States. And as in many countries, experts that any of the figures are underestimated due to inadequate evidence.
In tribute to those affected by COVID-19, the non-governmental organization Rio de Paz placed crosses on the sand of the prominent Copacabana beach on Saturday and threw 1,000 red balloons into the sky.
“It’s very sad. These 100,000 are other families, friends, parents, young people,” said Marcio do Nascimento Silva, a 56-year-old taxi engine that lost its children in the pandemic and joined the tribute.
“We are reaching this threshold (100,000) and many others do not seem to see it, either within the government or in our other people. It’s not just numbers, it’s other people. Death is normal,” Silva said.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who himself said he had swelled up, was a constant skeptic about the effect of the disease and an advocate of lifting restrictions on the economy that had been imposed through state governors seeking to combat it. He mingled with the crowd, without a mask.
“I’m all dead, it’s already 100,000, but we’ll find a way out,” Bolsonaro said on a Facebook broadcast Thursday night.
Experts complained about Bolsonaro’s lack of national coordination and the scattered responses of municipal and state governments, with some reopening earlier than recommended by fitness experts.
“Administrative incompetence has ruined our chance of having a reaction to COVID,” said Miguel Lago, executive director of the Brazilian Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public fitness officials.
Brazil faces the pandemic with an interim fitness minister, Eduardo Pazuello, an army general who has made his career in logistics. Two fitness premieres, whether doctors, resigned for differences with Bolsonaro on social distance measures and the use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by the president but which maximum studies have found effective against COVID-19, or even dangerous.
Bolsonaro, who COVID-19 is a “small flu,” says he has recovered from his own infection with the drug.
Many of Brazil’s 27 states have begun reopening department stores and restaurants, responses have been delayed, as have tension in the health care system. While Brasilia, the capital, has recorded almost 80% occupancy of its large care beds, Rio de Janeiro’s occupancy rate has now fallen to less than 30%.
In Rio, grocery stores and restaurants have already been opened and others have returned to the beaches.
“The scenario is very padded and we don’t see why this is happening. Perhaps the contagion rate is much higher than that reported at the start of the pandemic and that many other people on the street are immune,” said Graccho Alvim, director. Association of State Hospitals
Viviane Melo da Silva, 47, lost her mother, Esther Melo da Silva, in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, on April 9. The mother reported having had a bleeding and a few days later began to have breathing problems. He died after five days in a public hospital.
“I still don’t settle for his death, not yet,” Da Silva said, weeping and expressing remorse that the family circle simply doesn’t hold a vigil for his mother.
“The government said it a “little flu.” He didn’t care about that. He didn’t care and that’s what happened: other blameless people died because of government negligence and lack of preparedness,” he added.
Nazare Rosa de Paula, 67, said many others were still oblivious to the virus despite so many deaths. She said her husband Geraldo, a 70-year-old retired bus driver, would wear a mask to move to the supermarket in Rio de Janeiro, but never thought he would get infected.
In April, he had what he felt like it was just a flu. After his fitness deteriorated for 8 days, he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and died on April 28.
“It’s fast. There’s no time to do anything and it surprised a lot of people,” de Paula said.