COVID-19 – 6 million cases worldwide and an overview of the diagnosis in Brazil: a tragedy to be announced

• Published in: Diagnostic microbiology and infectious disease Vol. 98; no. 2; p. 115113
• Main Author: Marson, Fernando Augusto Lima
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.10.2020
• Subjects: Brazil; Brazil - epidemiology; Cause of Death; Clinical Laboratory Techniques - methods; Coronavirus Infections - diagnosis; Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology; COVID-19; COVID-19 Testing; COVID-19 Vaccines; Disease Outbreaks - statistics & numerical data; DNA, Viral - analysis; Epidemiology; Female; Global Health; Humans; Male; Pandemics - statistics & numerical data; Pneumonia, Viral - diagnosis; Pneumonia, Viral - epidemiology; Prevalence; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; RT-PCR; Survival Analysis; Brazil; COVID-19; Brazil; Epidemiology; RT-PCR
• ISSN: 0732-8893; 1879-0070
• DOI: 10.1016/j.diagmicrobio.2020.115113

On 1 June 2020, 6 million cases of COVID-19 were recorded with a total of 374,927 deaths worldwide. Brazil, at that point, presented a total of 514,992 cases and 29,341 deaths caused by the COVID-19 disease. At that moment, Brazil appeared in the second position regarding number of cases, fourth in number of deaths, second in number of recovered patients (N = 206,555), second in number of follow-up cases (N = 279,096), third in number of active and serious cases (N = 8,318), 39th in number of cases per million inhabitants (N = 2,424), and 125th in number of SARS-CoV-2 real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) exams per million inhabitants (N = 4,378). To beat the pandemic, Brazil needs to optimize the COVID-19 diagnosis through the SARS-CoV-2 identification using RT-PCR tests and adjust its policies to save lives. Brazil is in a crucial moment to minimize the impact of the illness on society by reducing the number of new cases and thus, preventing deaths, mainly of the risk group populations. However, as widely announced, in Brazil the diagnosis using RT-PCR is still scarce and part of the material collected from COVID-19 patients was disposed of and many patients were not tested, regardless of the seriousness of the symptoms, due to errors of medical data records, improper conservation of the samples after collection and/or during transport, which compromised the quality of the material to be tested. Moreover, the federal government has supported the end of the quarantine, while the number of deaths has grown in thousands every day and the cases have been expanding to the interior of the country.