At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19's pandemic was still in its infancy. Many had assumed it would be nothing more than a slightly stronger seasonal flu and many more were ready to brush the news aside, wanting to go about their lives as they normally did. Flash forward to today and over two million people have lost their lives to the disease with numbers continuing to rack up. Now in 2021, countries are finally starting to recover with the release of vaccines but the country of Brazil continues to struggle.
Many things about the country make it a perfect setting for the COVID-19 disease to easily spread. Brazil is the sixth most populated country in the world with a total of nearly 212 million people living within its borders. A large portion of these people resides in the large urban megacities such as São Paulo and the county's capital Rio De Janeiro. The situation is made even worse in Brazilian shantytowns otherwise known as favelas. These favelas frequently develop around large cities and usually are made of up small, cramped living spaces with very little space between dwellings. To make matter worse, these favelas are not recognized by the federal government and are typically lacking in the basics of infrastructure such as hospitals. The lack of hospitals in these areas has made the management of spread much more difficult as sick people must travel out of their favelas to receive treatment. Often these people, if able to reach the hospital in the first place, find themselves at severely over-crowded buildings with insufficient means to treat them. All of these factors culminate into a nightmarish situation for the people of Brazil and the perfect breeding ground for COVID-19.
The Average São Paulo Favela
As a whole, Brazil is unfortunately ranked second in the world for COVID-19 related deaths. As of writing, the death count falls somewhere around 270 thousand deaths with more likely to be added to that number.
Brazil's COVID-19 Crisis
As of recently, a second wave of COVID- 19 has begun to sweep through the country. In the past month alone, the country has managed to break its own record for most deaths report in a day, three times over. This second wave has partially been brought about as a result of defiance regarding the restrictions on social gatherings. In one case, a party of nearly 200 maskless attendees was gathered at a local bar and took several hours to disperse. This lackadaisical participation in COVID-19 restricting practices has made maintaining the spread of the disease all the more difficult. On top of this, a new variant of the disease, known as P.1, was detected in the city of Manaus and has been making its way throughout the country. With Brazil's tight population density, the new variant could not have asked for a better location to develop. Early reports on the new variant have estimated that it could possibly be 2.2 times more transmissible than the regular COVID-19 variant and could even potentially be threatening to those who already had the disease. The full extent of this new variant is not entirely known yet, however, especially when considering that this research has not yet been peer review or published in any medical journal. P.1 has already been detected in the United States, United Kingdom, and neighboring Venezuela. Despite the grim nature of this second wave, there is a possible silver lining.
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may be able to neutralize the P.1 variant as well. Should this be the case, ongoing vaccination efforts may in fact be able to curb the spread of COVID- 19. The ball is now in the court of the Brazilian government to see to it that its citizens are effectively and swiftly vaccinated.
