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Covid-19: Brazil sees omicron cases soar but data blackout obscures true impact
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o133
The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has led to a spike in infections in Brazil with a rolling average of 69 010 new daily cases reported on 14 January, up from 22 626 a week earlier. But the true increase is likely to be significantly higher because of insufficient testing and failing public health databases, said public health experts.
The impact of the more infectious omicron variant on Latin America has come later than in Europe and North America but is currently driving a regional surge.1
More than 95% of coronaviruses sequenced by some Brazilian private health services and cities are the new variant, said Gerson Salvador, an infectious disease specialist and doctor at the University of São Paulo. However, the impact of omicron has been obscured by data blackspots because an attempt to hack Brazil’s Health Ministry for ransom last month has left several databases offline, limiting the government’s ability to collect data from state health authorities.2
“We have been experiencing a blackout since last month and don’t know from official data the exact numbers of covid-19 infections in Brazil,” said Salvador. A shortage of tests in the biggest cities is also leading to under-reporting. “The number of known cases is growing exponentially, but the official data we get is greatly underestimating the number of cases,” added Salvador.
César Eduardo Fernandes, head of the Brazilian Medical Association, has told Reuters that the rise in hospital admissions is a concern, as is a tripling of staff absences in the four weeks since the omicron wave hit. “It is possible some services will collapse,” he said.