Brazil surpassed Britain on COVID body count

Brazil is beyond Britain in terms of corona deaths. The country now has the highest death rate after the United States, according to data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. 909 deaths were reported in the past day.

According to the Brazilian ministry, 41,929 people have now died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. In Britain it is now 41,566, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. The US still has the most corona deaths by far: 114,669.

If you take into account the size of the population, the figures for Brazil are more favorable. The country has approximately 210 million inhabitants. The death toll per million people is 192. Many European countries have a higher number, reports the European Center for Disease Prevention. For example, the Netherlands now has 352 deaths per million inhabitants.

Despite the high death rate, Brazilian cities and counties have started easing strict measures to curb the virus. In Sao Paulo, for example, shops and shopping centers are open again four hours a day.

The measure was prompted by the drop in the number of corona patients in the ICU departments in the country. About 70 percent of the IC capacity is now occupied. Due to the reopening it is much busier on the street. In Sao Paulo, it led to crowded trains and buses, long lines for shops, and the rule of keeping distance.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, the need to bury the dead is so great that the municipality has the unorthodox plan to dig up graves in cemeteries and make way for the corona victims. The idea is to have tombs older than three years of age removed and the excavated human remains stored in containers. They will be delivered to various cemeteries in the next two weeks.

Sao Paulo is one of the foci of the corona virus in Brazil. In the city of about 12 million inhabitants, nearly 5,500 people have died. Experts fear that the peak has not yet been reached and that the disease will spread from the urban areas further inland.