Coronavirus: Brazil to pass the US in deaths?

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has taken an approach to the coronavirus pandemic that makes it look like Sweden is acting like China. (Now not all the Brazilian states followed along with his approach.) A forecast from the University of Washington is saying that this approach is going to result in some very negative consequences for the country.

CBS News (Jun 18) reports:

Thus far, the U.S. has suffered roughly 70,000 more COVID-19 related deaths than Brazil. However, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), part of the University of Washington's School of Medicine, projects Brazil's death toll will surpass the United States' sometime in July, according to its latest modeling.

"Brazil basically needs those informal workers to go out there to keep the economy growing and so, it's exposed and given confusing messages to the poorer and most vulnerable Brazilians," [Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)'s director of the Andes] said. "At the same time, he's fighting with the states and local authorities who have tried to impose guidelines and measures to try to contain the contagion... There's now a major crisis throughout the country, making it the epicenter in the Americas and it's hitting disproportionately the poorer areas of Brazil."



Business Insider (Jun 16) has some other details:

Brazil has not initiated a national testing campaign, has not implemented a national lockdown, and is dealing with insufficient healthcare expansion.

. . . The Post described Bolsonaro's approach as being to ignore and sideline health experts. The Brazilian president fired Luiz Henrique Mandetta, his first health minister, after disagreements on social distancing, and then he fired his replacement, Nelson Teich, because he disagreed with the use of chloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus.

According to Worldometer, as of Thursday, the United States had 120,688 deaths due to COVID-19. Brazil had 47,869. If we say that Brazil will surpass the United States by July 31st, it needs to average 1,693 more deaths than the United States on a daily basis (starting as of Friday, Jun 19th). The way they'd get there would be to see a dramatic growth in daily deaths. The same above Business Insider has this quote on what the future has for Brazil:

The country, which has yet to impose a national coronavirus lockdown, is on its way to registering more than 4,000 daily deaths, The Washington Post reported, citing the university.

Reuters (June 16) has this additional information:

Brazil, the world’s No. 2 coronavirus hotspot after the United States, is fast approaching 1 million cases, although experts say the true number is likely higher due to patchy testing. Brazil also registered 1,282 COVID-19 deaths since its last update on Monday, the Health Ministry said, bringing confirmed fatalities in the country to 45,241.

. . . [Walter Braga Netto, the head of the office of the president’s chief of staff, known as Casa Civilsaid] said Brazil’s deaths-per-million-people figure was better than that of Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy and France. As such, the Army general said he “was trying to convey a message of optimism in the management of the crisis.”

Since Brazil hasn't pursued a national testing campaign, it is very likely that cases are significantly understated. Brazil has conducted 8,289 tests per million compared to the US, which has conducted 80,750 tests per million. If Brazil conducted a similar amount of tests as the U.S. and had a similar positive outcome as the U.S., their case count would end up at around 1.45M versus their current 0.983M.

Walter Braga Netto is true in saying that Brazil's deaths are lower than many European countries. Yet, if the University of Washington is correct, that gap will seriously close or be surpassed by the end of July.