Who is going to pay the price of Covid-19? Reflections about an unequal Brazil

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused high mortality rates among older people, and in order to avoid a healthcare system crisis, almost all countries worldwide have adopted social isolation measures to prevent the spread of the disease. However, in Brazil, a country demarcated by economic inequalities, in which approximately 25% of the population live below the poverty line, these measures will cost severe economic losses and accentuated starvation. For this reason, the underprivileged population should be immediately prioritized and well informed through good practice to avoid the virus. Since, government discrepancies in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak leaves the population without congruent guidelines on how to react or what to believe, allowing the spread of fake news and political crises. Here, we discuss who will pay the price of the Brazilian government denying the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and suggest some measures to ensure that clear information and protection reach this population.

Global perspective of COVID‐19 epidemiology for a full‐cycle pandemic

“…Some projections have been made for these excess deaths, and evidence is already accumulating for some of these excess death causes. 7,8,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Putting projections together, the excess deaths from the measures taken is likely to be much larger than the COVID-19 deaths, for example, disruption of tuberculosis programmes alone is expected to cause 1.4 million extra deaths over the next 5 years and the death toll from famine can be even more staggering. However, the exact impact of these major problems has very large uncertainty, and some projections may be exaggerated (as was the cause also for COVID-19 projections).…”

Regional Covid-19 Mortality in Brazil by Age

“…In short, the risks of death in Brazil are largely related to the age structure of the population, general health conditions and socioeconomic situation to which the population is exposed (Borges 2017;França et al 2017). Therefore, in a country marked by major regional and socioeconomic differences (Ribeiro and Leist 2020), which occur regardless of geographic level (Queiroz et al 2017;Schmertmann and Gonzaga 2018;Baptista and Queiroz 2019), this analysis is essential. Additionally, there is an hypothesis that mortality by COVID-19 in Brazil has a younger age structure than observed in other countries (Guilmoto 2020) and this regional analysis might shed some light on this discussion.…”

Offer and Use of Oral Health in Primary Care Before and After the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil

“…The results of this investigation indicate that the expansion of the assistance network has not yet been affected by the pandemic. Although oral health coverage is still far from reaching the entire Brazilian population, it is known that the public health system serves the majority of the most vulnerable population [10,23]. Therefore, setbacks in the expansion of the Brazilian National Health System dental care could contribute to an increase in oral health inequities [11,19].…”

“…However, Brazil is currently considered the center of the epidemic, which can be attributed to the fact that official government communication has not fully adhered to a series of isolation measures recommended by WHO [10). The government chose to invest mainly in the hospital network, neglecting the strengthening of primary health care, which may favor the collapse of the health system before the increasing trend of COVID-19 cases [11].…”