Update of May 8, 2021

Brazil is the second country after the United States to have suffered the most in absolute terms from Covid 19 with 15,08 million people infected and 419,393 dead on May 7, 2021. On average day over the last week, the number of infected is 60,200 (+3% over the last 14 days) and deaths of 2,158 (-15%) with 78,337 infected and 2,127 deaths in the last 24 hours. April and March were the deadliest months in a 14-month pandemic with 82,401 dead in April and 66,868 in March and the total death toll has practically doubled since January 20, from 212,000 to 404,000 on April 30. On an average day, it has been 107 days in a row that the 14-day moving average of deaths has been above 1,000, 52 days above 2,000, but has fallen since April 29 below 2,500. In addition, the 14-day average of new contaminations stabilizes slightly above 60.000. The curves have therefore started to stabilize after more than 4 months of vertiginous rise, even if the plateau remains very high. Another encouraging sign, the reproduction rate, i.e. the average number of people infected with a virus carrier fell since April 27 below the threshold of 1 and this while the Brazilian variant P1 now represents 90 % of samples analyzed against 80% in March, 40% in February and 20% in January. Brazil’s death rate remains the highest in the Americas at 189 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Brazilian government has reinstated, as of December 30, the obligation for Brazilians and foreigners to present to the airline company before boarding the negative results of a PCR test carried out within 72 hours to be authorized to enter the territory. The PCR test must be translated into English. In addition, travelers will have to sign a declaration committing them to accept all preventive measures (without being specified) on Covid 19 taken in the country.

Since April 24, flights between France and Brazil are again authorized although the companies have announced a restricted service for the coming months. The French government has specified the 10 days isolation measures on arrival of travelers in France: Certificate signed by the arrival that he has taken note of the quarantine measures, presentation of a negative PCR test less than 36 hours before departure or PCR of less than 72 hours + antigen test of less than 24 hours, proof of address or hotel for unannounced police checks outside the 10h00 – 12h00 period when the person has the right to go out and finally, a declaration on the honor that the arrival has no Covid symptoms and that he is not aware of having been in contact with a confirmed case of Covid in the 14 days preceding the trip. In the event of non-attendance on site during a control, the fine is € 1,500.00 and in the event of a recurrence € 3,000.00.

For your information, the vaccination campaign in Brazil began on January 17 with the vaccination of the first person in Sao Paulo, a 54-year-old nurse. In Rio, this campaign started on January 19, each state (there are 27) being in charge of vaccinating its population. As of May 7, 34,914,631 people (16.49% of the population) received a first vaccination in Brazil and 17,578,127 (8.30%) a second. A total of 52,578,127 doses were applied to the population, ie 3.8% of the total number of worldwide vaccinations. The goal of vaccinating 1 million people per day has only been reached 10 times since vaccination began in January. The vaccination rate has slowed for 2 weeks due to lack of doses, in a context of a contamination plateau that is still high, which raises fears of a new increase in contamination in the next few weeks.

All the restriction measures in Rio were lifted by the mayor yesterday, even the curfew from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. as well as the beaches which are again accessible 7 days a week.