For The First Time, Brazil Has Recorded A Decrease In COVID-19 Cases

JAKARTA - For the first time since May the number of deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil has decreased. This represents a step forward for the Latin American country. Brazil has recently been the second country with the highest cases in the world.

Launching Reuters on Thursday, September 3, Brazil has confirmed four million cases with more than 120 thousand deaths. However, the daily mortality rate on average fell below nine hundred per day last week.

That figure is the lowest in three and a half months, putting Brazil below the death rates for the United States (US) and India. Researchers at Imperial College London also calculated that the rate of transmission in Brazil was below level 1.

This rate is a calculation that new infections are slowing down. Previously, the rate of COVID-19 transmission in Brazil had also fallen below level 1 in August. However, that figure only lasted one week.

However, the statistics presented by the Brazilian Government show instability still exists. On Tuesday, September 1 and Wednesday, September 2, Brazil recorded more than 1,100 deaths every day and experts said it was too early to say the worst was over.

"We are on a downward trend compared to the previous plateau," said Roberto Medronho, an infectious disease expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. "But the numbers are still high and we must remain vigilant so as not to increase again."

Epidemiologists see Brazil as a warning to several other countries, such as India, which are now experiencing a spike in cases. "Brazil is a tale of caution," said Albert Ko, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

"The epidemic is hitting hard and many evidence-based interventions are not implemented or carried out correctly in many places," added the expert with decades of experience in epidemiology.

Social distancing, held by most public health experts as a key tool to contain the spread of the virus, has been poorly implemented from its inception in Brazil. This keeps the number of COVID-19 in Brazil at the top.

Stay-at-home measures have been relaxed across the country under pressure from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro said staying at home was dangerous for the economy.

For Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo's School of Medicine, the cause of the high COVID-19 rate in the long term is places like the south and the central west that fail to sustain key measures.

"If they have taken the right actions, exercised adequate control and maintained it for a longer time, they would have avoided the outbreak and Brazil would be in a better situation," he explained.