(Q24N) Brazil this Thursday registered the second highest number of daily coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, with 47,984 new infections, bringing the total in the country to 1,501,353, according to the Brazilian media consortium, which collects statistics of the ministries of health in the 26 states of the country when considering the officials as unreliable
In relation to the deaths, 1,277 new deaths were registered on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 61,990.
Brazil is the second country in the world with the highest number of cases and deaths due to the virus, behind only the United States, which has around 2.7 million confirmed infections and more than 128,000 deaths.
The Brazilian Ministry of Health has highlighted a recent advance of the disease in the southern and mid-western regions, initially less affected by the disease. Government officials also said that more than 90% of Brazilian municipalities already register cases of coronavirus.
Although the country is at the height of the pandemic, many states and municipalities began their processes of economic reactivation and lack of confidence, including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the states most affected by the disease in Brazil.
According to the press consortium, São Paulo reached 302,179 cases and 15,351 deaths. The regional government estimated at a press conference on Thursday that the state could reach 23,000 deaths and 470,000 cases of COVID-19 on July 15.
Brazil would have at least 8 million people infected by coronavirus, five times more than the number of cases confirmed by the Government (1.5 million), according to a study commissioned by the Ministry of Health and which examined blood samples from 89,397 Brazilians in 133 cities.
The study, whose results were disclosed this Thursday at a press conference at the Ministry of Health, shows the high rate of underreporting of cases of the disease in Brazil.
According to the study carried out by researchers from the Federal University of Pelotas, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, 3.8% of the people examined between June 21 and 24 had antibodies to COVID-19 in their samples of blood, that is to say that it was infected or had already come into contact with the virus that transmits the disease.
Projecting that percentage, the researchers calculate that if 3.8% of the 211 million Brazilians have antibodies to the virus, at least 8 million would have been infected at some point in the last four months.
The study was carried out in three stages (second fortnight in May, first fortnight in June and second fortnight in June) and showed that the number of infected people jumped by 23% between the second and third stages, well below the increase of 53 % measured between the first and the second.
With information from Reuters and EFE