Lack of data affects monitoring of coronavirus cases in Brazil

While in much of the world the omicron variant shoot cases of COVID-19, one of the countries most devastated by the pandemic is struggling to keep track of new cases, deaths and hospitalizations.

Officials from the Ministry of Health of Brazil They have not yet fully recovered from the attacks on their system by hackers between December 10-13, so researchers say the data is incomplete and often difficult to access.

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States and municipalities have trouble uploading their information to ministry platforms, and publicly accessible web pages are often down.

The information shortage couldn’t come at a worse time: Cases of COVID-19 They are increasing at the same time as a flu outbreak with similar symptoms. As a result of the confusion, people stand in long lines at pharmacies looking for tests, and waits at health centers are very long.

Marcelo Gomes, a public health researcher at Fiocruz, a state research institution, relies on the Ministry of Health database to coordinate Infogripe newsletters that track serious respiratory diseases in the country.

“We are blind”, dijo Gomes a The Associated Press. “You need an overview of an entire municipality, of an entire state, to be able to identify the situation properly ”.

Although the Ministry of Health reported 53,292 cases of COVID-19 in the week of December 27 to January 2, a national association of pharmacies said that only its 8,500 branches registered 94,540 positive tests during the same period, an increase of 33%. compared to the previous week.

The association noted that cases are expanding especially rapidly in large states such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where confirmed COVID-19 cases in pharmacies increased by almost 50% in the same period.

A private diagnostic services company, Diagnosticos America, told the AP that it is seeing a sharp increase in the percentage of tests positive versus negative, which is often a sign that the virus is spreading. The company noted that the positivity rate went from 22% on December 30 to 43% on January 6.

Despite the increase in cases, so far no state has reported that its hospital system is saturated. Some, such as Minas Gerais, Piaui, and Amazonas, have seen significant increases in hospitalization rates. Rio de Janeiro’s rate has barely budged from its lowest level since the pandemic began.

The press offices of the health ministries of nine states – including Sao Paulo – told the AP that they continue to have difficulties transmitting information to the federal government.

“The accesses to the systems have been normalized, but it is still possible to observe the consequences in the data after the attack of the hackers,” the national council of health ministries told the AP in an e-mailed statement.

The Federal Police are investigating the hack into the Health Ministry system, which told the AP that it has already restored its systems.

The expert in digital law Luiza Leite pointed out that the data breach suffered by the Ministry of Health forced the government to back up all its information, reintroduce it into the system and then carry out several vulnerability tests against subsequent hacks, even while new data arrived.

“The simple fact that an attack occurred shows the lack of a well-structured policy to protect information”added.

Health researchers had already criticized the way the country compiled and disseminated data during the pandemic. “In addition to underreporting, the absence of evidence and creative accounting, we now have this lack of transparency ”stated Miguel Lago, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Health Policies, which advises Brazilian public health authorities.

“Data are important for public policy planning, but in health they are fundamental, even more in the context of a pandemic”added.

Gomes, a researcher at Fiocruz, said having more complete information would have helped people make their decisions about travel and meetings during the Christmas and New Year holidays.

“The transmission of the virus depends on our individual and collective behavior”, Gomes pointed out. He also indicated that in the sequencing data he has reviewed, he found that most recent cases were of the omicron variant, but cautioned that the laboratory samples are not necessarily representative of the general public.

As of Thursday, the ministry had identified 265 cases of the omicron and 520 more were under observation. The first death confirmed by the variant occurred this week.

Even despite the lack of reliable information to guide decisions, many state and municipal officials have again proceeded to restrict activities, including street parties on the occasion of the upcoming Carnival celebrations, in the hope of limiting contagion.

Brazil also suffered a censorship of official information on COVID-19 in June 2020, when the government withdrew it from the internet after President Jair Bolsonaro, who insists on downplaying the severity of the disease, complained that it the numbers “They were not representative”. Soon the highest court ordered the restoration of the pages.

At that time, the coronavirus had left some 34,000 victims. Until this week, figures from the Ministry of Health show almost 620,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the country, the second highest number in the world.

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Deshawn