Commentary
COVID-19 in Brazil: 150,000 deaths and the Brazilian underreporting

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diagmicrobio.2020.115258Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Monitoring of death indicators is a strategy recommended by the World Health Organization to assess the direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • The global underreporting is a challenge to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and it is associated with political, technological, and economic burden associated with different territories.

  • In our data, the high number of unexpected deaths by natural causes during the COVID-19 pandemic is evident.

  • A total of 118,406 unexpected deaths by natural causes was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Maybe, our data represent the Brazilian underreporting for severe patients affected by COVID-19 due to limitations to perform the SARS-CoV-2 screen by RT-PCR.

Abstract

Brazil is one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic and has reported 5,113,628 cases and 150,998 deaths by the disease. Comparing the deaths by natural causes expected and the excess mortality rate, there is a 22% increase in deaths mainly of male patients and individuals over 60 years old.

Keywords

Brazil
COVID-19
Diagnosis
Pandemic
SARS-CoV-2 virus

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1

These authors contributed equally to this study.

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