For the fifth week in a row, the rate of positive tests for Covid-19 falls in the country, once again falling below 30%, according to the online panel of the Brazilian Association of Pharmacy and Drugstore Chains (Abrafarma). The last balance corresponds to the exams taken in the week of July 25th to 31st.
The positivity rate was 24.88%, the lowest percentage since the last week of April this year, when the index reached 19.84%. In relation to the week immediately before that (July 18 to 24), a 33% drop was observed in the number of tests that were positive for the disease.
This last week also saw the lowest number of tests performed, in absolute numbers, from the week of April 11 to 17. There were 62,115 tests performed, of which 46,658 were negative (75.12%) and 15,457 were positive (24.88%). Abrafarma, which brings together the 26 largest pharmacy chains in the country, gathers data from tests carried out in 4,973 pharmacies.
From January of this year until the last bulletin released by Abrafarma, more than 6.4 million tests were carried out in pharmacies in the country, 2.05 million of which were positive. Since the beginning of the series, in April 2020, 19,213,706 tests have been carried out, with 4,504,100 positive results, a rate of 23.44%.
long covid
While positive tests for Covid-19 show a downward trend, the duration of symptoms caused by the infection remains uncertain.
A large Dutch study published in the scientific journal The Lancet on Thursday revealed that one in eight adults infected with the coronavirus has long-term symptoms.
In the survey, experts collected data by asking participants in a large study in the Netherlands called the Lifelines Covid-19 Cohort to regularly fill out digital questionnaires about 23 symptoms commonly associated with long-term Covid.
The questionnaire was sent 24 times to the same subjects between March 2020 and August 2021. Of the 76,422 volunteers, 4,231 (5.5%) who had Covid-19 were compared with 8,462 people without the disease (called the control group), taking into account gender, age and time of completion of questionnaires that indicated a positive diagnosis.
The researchers identified that several symptoms were new or more severe three to five months after infection, compared with symptoms before diagnosis and with the control group, suggesting that these symptoms can be seen as the main symptoms of long-term Covid.
The main symptoms recorded were chest pain, difficulty breathing, pain when breathing, muscle pain, loss of taste or smell, tingling in the hands or feet, lump in the throat, alternating feeling of heat and cold, heavy arms or legs, general pain and tiredness.
Basic care helps prevent Covid-19
Source: CNN Brasil
