Brazil coronavirus: medics fear official tally ignores 'a mountain of deaths'

[Judi Lynn]

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

Sat 4 Apr 2020 05.05 EDT

Brazil is bracing for a surge in coronavirus cases as doctors and researchers warn that underreporting and a lack of testing mean nobody knows the real scale of Covid-19’s spread.

“What’s happening is enormous underreporting,” said Isabella Rêllo, a doctor working in emergency and intensive care in Rio de Janeiro hospitals, in a widely shared Facebook post challenging official numbers. “There are MANY more,” she wrote.

As Latin America’s worst hit country, Brazil officially has 9,056 coronavirus cases – including actors, singers, government ministers and Fabio Wajngarten, press secretary of the president, Jair Bolsonaro.

With 14 million Brazilians living in densely populated favelas where basic sanitation is frequently lacking, informal workers are struggling from lost income during lockdown, and social isolation is challenging or impossible. The first case has already been reported in an Amazon indigenous community.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/04/medics-in-brazil-fear-official-coronavirus-tally-ignores-a-mountain-of-deaths