Due to lack of access to data, the number of transmissions, hospitalizations and deaths by Covid-19 in Brazil today are only speculative, and complicate decision-making related to the application of new doses for children and adults, organization of events and economic and economic activities. school year, which starts in February.
The alert was made by researcher and public health specialist at Fiocruz Raphael Guimarães, who spoke to CNN this Thursday (6). According to the expert, the government’s inability to restore data on vaccination in the country after the hacker attack on December 10th hinders efficient monitoring of the pandemic and decision-making.
“We’ve been experiencing a data blackout for a month, and we can barely monitor the occurrence of Covid in the country,” said Guimarães. “Unfortunately, everything that is said today in Brazil is more speculative than based on data”.
“We have the introduction of a variant that surely already has community transmission, has concomitant infection with Influenza and we know very little about the real number of cases of hospitalization and death”, he added.
The blackout of data, according to the researcher, complicates the continuation of vaccination in the country and has contributed to delaying the vaccination of children, which should have started soon after the authorization of the childhood immunizing agent by Anvisa, says Guimarães.
“We should have started longer, surely. We should have started last year, and we urgently need to resolve this imbroglio that has become the lack of access to data for proper monitoring”, he explained.
Classes and Carnival
The specialist also said that monitoring based on reliable data makes it possible to draw more concrete panoramas to find out the real situation regarding the transmission of Covid in Brazil and to start planning the return to classes in early February.
“The return does not only involve vaccinating the children, but a whole restructuring of a face-to-face model so that this can be possible, ensuring all individual and collective protection measures, not only within the classroom, but throughout the environment in the with regard to transport, commerce, use of goods and services”, he highlights.
About Carnival, he stated that, even with the cancellation of the party in many cities, there are still places that hold the events. And even though street carnival is prohibited, there are agglomerations in closed spaces that would need to be closely monitored to assess the transmission frame.
“Although there is no street party, there are cities in Brazil that are great attractions at this time of year. We need to talk about this more clearly, with data, but today we don’t have the data in hand”.
Reference: CNN Brasil
