Underreporting of death by COVID-19 in Brazil's second most populous state

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brings to light the reality of the Brazilian health system. The underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in the state of Minas Gerais (MG), where is concentrated the second largest population of the country, reveals government unpreparedness, as there is a low capacity of testing in the population, which prevents the real understanding of the general panorama of Sars-Cov-2 dissemination. The goals of this research are to analyze the causes of deaths in the different Brazilian government databases (ARPEN and SINAN) and to assess whether there are sub-records shown by the unexpected increase in the frequency of deaths from causes clinically similar to COVID-19. A descriptive and quantitative analysis of the number of COVID-19 deaths and similar causes was made in different databases. Ours results demonstrate that the different official sources had a discrepancy of 209.23% between these data referring to the same period. There was also a 648.61% increase in SARS deaths in 2020, when compared to the average of previous years. Finally, it was shown that there was an increase in the rate of pneumonia and respiratory insufficiency (RI) by 5.36% and 5.72%, respectively. In conclusion, there is an underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in MG due to the unexplained excess of SARS deaths, Respiratory insufficiency and pneumonia compared to previous years.

Coronavirus Disease Pandemic Is a Real Challenge for Brazil

“…In summary, the Brazilian challenge is not only to stop the spread of COVID-19 but also to find agreement between political leaders, scientific societies, and the general population. The Brazilian scientific community and healthcare workers are working hard to provide support for political health measures to address COVID-19 (15,16). Hopefully, this pandemic may be an opportunity for political leaders and the general population to clearly comprehend the pivotal importance of science and the public health system in their daily lives.…”

Reducing SARS-CoV-2 infectious spreading patterns by removing S and R compartments from SIR model equation

“…Despite new formulations based on agent-based modeling approaches [19,20] for SARS-CoV-2 are being deeply described [21][22][23], the lack of fixed point orientation and asymptotic instability for S and R are still visible when we consider that an agent-based model can be under or overestimated by the type and duration of policy making worldwide [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] having this feature as the main attractive network interactions. This confounding environment of study presents itself for COVID-19 pandemic as an impossible methodology to be used in terms of prediction since embedded components between policies and individual behavior are presented and act as a limiting factors for the machine learning analytics for S and R as well as the pre assumptions of a global homomorphism basis for the individual scale of infected person and SARS-CoV-2 behavior to population behavior.…”

“…Recent researches have been pointing to the robust analysis of convergence orientation within policies adoption by countries (non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)) [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], therefore, remaining these efforts to the conclusion of component I of model as the best predictable pattern formation to be used for epidemics analytical behavior. Considering all countries epidemic behavior in convergence to the policies adopted, I component present a good performance of indicator of analysis behavior to infer with numerical results the noise [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] caused by some compartment components of SIR models approaches of predictability.…”

Estratégias protetivas, administrativas e ambientais para a saúde dos trabalhadores durante a pandemia / Protective, administrative and environmental strategies for workers' health during the pandemic

“…Neste sentido, observam-se grandes discrepâncias que chegam a 209% em relação a períodos anteriores. 8 Diante deste panorama, a segurança e proteção dos profissionais da saúde se constituíram um grande desafio na assistência aos pacientes suspeitos ou confirmados por Covid-19, já que em junho/2020, o mundo registrava mais que 230.000 casos confirmados e 600 mortes apenas da categoria de enfermagem. 9 No Brasil, desde o início da pandemia até o dia 25 de setembro de 2020, a contar apenas pelos registros públicos da categoria da enfermagem, foram registrados quase 40 mil casos confirmados e 434 óbitos.…”

“…10 Uma das particularidades desta pandemia é a racionalização do uso dos Equipamentos de Proteção Individual (EPI), tal situação foi observada na China, países da Europa, Estados Unidos da América e até mesmo no Brasil, quando foi proposto como estratégia de contingência, durante períodos de escassez de EPI, a descontaminação e reutilização de respiradores de máscara N95/FFP2. [8][9] No Brasil relatos da ausência dos equipamentos de segurança se repetem, seja em consequência do alto custo ou da oferta reduzida destes produtos no mercado. 10 Para o enfrentamento e controle de infecções respiratórias agudas propensas a epidemias e pandemias nos cuidados de saúde como o Covid-19, é possível observar diretrizes da Organização Mundial da Saúde sobre as melhores práticas e princípios não farmacológicos para prevenção desses agravos, visando o norteamento de formuladores de políticas, gestores e profissionais de saúde.…”