Brazil: The country in the “dark” for the pandemic due to lack of tests and cyber attack

Lack of diagnostic tests and a blackout in the data after a cyber attack have left Brazil in the dark regarding the evolution of covid-19, at a time when the country is facing a new wave of the epidemic due to the variant strain Omicron of the coronavirus, warns.

Brazilians with covid-19-like symptoms need to wait in lines for tests as there is a shortage in the country, which from the beginning did not have a comprehensive diagnostic strategy.

Careful recording of cases and genetic analysis of samples is critical to recording the course of the pandemic, especially after the appearance of Omicron.

The situation worsened as the Brazilian Ministry of Health databases were shut down for a while following a December 10 ransom attack, which limited the government’s ability to gather data from state health authorities.

“In general, the recording system was bad from the beginning and got worse with the cyber attack, so we are in a bad situation,” said Gonzalo Vesina, former head of Brazil’s Anvisa health regulator and a professor at the University of Sao.

“We are in the dark,” he said.

Despite the fact that Brazil has the highest number of deaths due to covid-19 after the US and Russia, according to Reuters estimates, the country has far fewer tests than other Latin American countries.

Over the past seven days in Brazil, an average of 0.23 tests were performed per 1,000 inhabitants, according to the website Our World in Data. During the same period, 2.15 tests were performed in Argentina and 3.88 in Uruguay.

Demand for tests has grown in Brazil over the Christmas and New Year holidays, and many pharmacies and clinics have run out of supplies.

“Exponential increase”

Despite limited resources to record them, the number of covid-19 cases in Brazil is increasing.

In Rio de Janeiro, the seven-day average rose more than 2,000% from mid-December to 398 on Monday.

“We are seeing an exponential increase in the number of cases, we are seeing patients every day. And this increase is being observed in areas where Omicron has been identified,” said Esper Callas, director of infectious diseases and a professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

The website of the Brazilian Federal Ministry of Health was launched again this week, but it has the data until the beginning of December, before the cyber attack.

So far, only 265 Omicron cases have been officially detected in Brazil since the end of November, according to the ministry.