Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025

Brazil government stops publishing virus death toll as data befuddles experts

Move comes after months of criticism from experts that the country’s statistics are woefully deficient

Brazil’s government has stopped publishing a running total of coronavirus deaths and infections in an extraordinary move that critics call an attempt to hide the true toll of the disease in Latin America’s largest nation.

Saturday’s move came after months of criticism from experts that Brazil’s statistics are woefully deficient, and in some cases manipulated, so it may never be possible to understand the depth of the pandemic in the country.

Brazil’s last official numbers showed it had recorded over 34,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, the third-highest number in the world, just ahead of Italy. It reported nearly 615,000 infections, putting it second, behind the United States. Brazil, with about 210 million people, is the globe’s seventh most populous nation.

On Friday, the federal Health Ministry took down a website that had showed daily, weekly and monthly figures on infections and deaths in Brazilian states. On Saturday, the site returned but the cumulative numbers of infections for states and the nation were no longer there. The site now shows only the numbers for the previous 24 hours.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tweeted Saturday that disease totals are “not representative” of the country’s current situation. Public prosecutors announced an investigation into the Health Ministry’s justification for the change.

A Bolsonaro ally contended to the newspaper O Globo that at least some states had sent falsified data to the Health Ministry, implying that they were exaggerating the toll. Carlos Wizard, a businessman expected to assume a high-level post in the Health Ministry, said the federal government would conduct a review to determine a “more accurate”’ toll.

“The number we have today is fanciful or manipulated,” Wizard said.

A council of state health secretaries said it would fight the changes by Bolsonaro, who has dismissed the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic and tried to thwart attempts to impose quarantines, curfews and social distancing, arguing those steps are causing more damage to the economy than the illness.

“The authoritarian, insensitive, inhumane and unethical attempt to make the Covid-19 deaths invisible will not prosper,” the health secretaries council said Saturday.

Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes said Saturday on Twitter that “manipulating statistics is a manoeuvre of totalitarian regimes.” João Gabbardo, the Health Ministry’s former No. 2, told television channel GloboNews that reviewing the death toll “shows the management inexperience in the Health Ministry. There’s no sense to that review. When countries do reviews, the number increases.”


While precise counts of cases and deaths are difficult for governments worldwide, health researchers have been saying for weeks that irregularities with Brazilian statistics were making it impossible to get a handle on an exploding situation.

Around the world, coronavirus deaths are being undercounted to varying degrees due to lack of universal testing. Academic groups in dozens of nations have tried to figure out the magnitude of the undercount by studying the total number of deaths in a set period compared to the average of prior years in a nation, state, province or city. Where they find unexplained surges in deaths, it is likely due in large part to undiagnosed cases of the coronavirus.

In Brazil, such efforts have been handicapped by problems with the government statistics that serve as a baseline.
“It is very difficult to make predictions that you think are reliable,’’ said Fabio Mendes, an adjunct professor in software engineering at the federal University of Brasilia, who studies coronavirus statistics. “We know the numbers are bad.”

Brazil’s Health Ministry did not respond to queries about allegations of problems with the data.

The gravity of the problems with Brazil’s data became clear last month when academics reviewing death certificates compiled by the federal Civil Registration office – which compiles data from all Brazilian states – found drastic, unexplained fluctuations in monthly deaths in recent years, and puzzling discrepancies between states.

In Rio de Janeiro state, the number of average monthly deaths fell sharply starting in January 2019, a change the Civil Registration office said stemmed from the state court providing duplicate data for previous years. The number of average monthly deaths in Manaus, the capital of the northern state of Amazonas, more than doubled when the shift occurred, which the office chalked up to delay in data submission.

On May 14, as independent investigators were questioning the inconsistencies, the Civil Registration office pulled more than 500,000 death certificates from its website, saying most were from Rio and it needed to review how the figures were tallied nationwide to make sure statistics were consistent year over year.

That made it virtually impossible to produce statistically significant analyses of excess death in Rio or Amazonas, two of the Brazilian states hit hardest by the coronavirus.

“Wow,” said Jesús Gómes-Gardeñes, an associate professor in physics and computational epidemiology at the University of Zaragoza, who has studied coronavirus statistics in his native Spain. “Half a million is a hell of a lot.”

Another way to detect uncounted deaths from the virus is by looking at deaths attributed to other conditions, like pneumonia and respiratory insufficiency. In the absence of widespread testing, deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are often attributed to one or more of these conditions.

Brazil’’s second most populous state, Minas Gerais, has recorded just 368 coronavirus deaths and has been praised for its handling of the pandemic. But data from Fiocruz, a respected, state-run biology foundation, show deaths from severe acute respiratory infections in the state rose eightfold from 2019 to 2020, to 1,796.

In Rio, the total number of deaths from pneumonia and respiratory insufficiency in the nine weeks through May 18 were 6,909 higher than in the same period last year. But the federal Health Ministry’s Covid-19 death toll for the same period was 2,852 – less than half the suspected number.

On May 22, as media and independent researchers debated the discrepancy, the Civil Registration office’s number of pneumonia and respiratory insufficiency deaths in the state fell from 6,909 to 3,599. The office said it was due to reclassification of death certificates that list several related causes of death.

Beyond the shifting and incomplete information, critics say, the Brazilian federal government has further eroded trust in its count-keeping with cosmetic changes to official sites that appear designed to de-emphasise the gravity of the epidemic.
One bulletin published by the president’s press office refers to patients in hospitals and intensive care units as “recovering,” even though a significant number eventually die of Covid-19.

“We are becoming an international joke in terms of public health,” said Domingos Alves, an associate professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. “Deaths cannot be hidden by decree.”




Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
China Accuses US of Violating Trade Truce
Panama Port Owner Balances US-China Pressures
France Implements Nationwide Outdoor Smoking Ban to Protect Children
German Chancellor Merz Keeps Putin Guessing on Missile Strategy
Mandelson Criticizes UK's 'Fetish' for Abandoning EU Regulations
British Fishing Boat Owner Fined €30,000 by French Authorities
Dutch government falls as far-right leader Wilders quits coalition
Harvard Urges US to Unfreeze Funds for Public Health Research
Businessman Mauled by Lion at Luxury Namibian Lodge
Researchers Consider New Destinations Beyond the U.S.
53-Year-Old Doctor Claims Biological Age of 23
Trump Struggles to Secure Trade Deals With China and Europe
Russia to Return 6,000 Corpses Under Ukraine Prisoner Swap Deal
Microsoft Lays Off Hundreds More Amid Restructuring
Harvey Weinstein’s Publicist Embraces Notoriety
Macron and Meloni Seek Unity Despite Tensions
Trump Administration Accused of Obstructing Deportation Cases
Newark Mayor Sues Over Arrest at Immigration Facility
Center-Left Candidate Projected to Win South Korean Presidency
Trump’s Tariffs Predicted to Stall Global Economic Growth
South Korea’s President-Elect Expected to Take Softer Line on Trump and North Korea
Trump’s China Strategy Remains a Geopolitical Puzzle
Ukraine Executes Long-Range Drone Strikes on Russian Airbases
Conservative Karol Nawrocki wins Poland’s presidential election
Study Identifies Potential Radicalization Risk Among Over One Million Muslims in Germany
Good news: Annalena Baerbock Elected President of the UN General Assembly
Apple Appeals EU Law Over User Data Sharing Requirements
South Africa: "First Black Bank" Collapses after Being Looted by Owners
Poland will now withdraw from the EU migration pact after pro-Trump nationalist wins Election
"That's Disgusting, Don’t Say It Again": The Trump Joke That Made the President Boil
Trump Cancels NASA Nominee Over Democratic Donations
Paris Saint-Germain's Greatest Triumph Is Football’s Lowest Point
OnlyFans for Sale: From Lockdown Lifeline to Eight-Billion-Dollar Empire
Mayor’s Security Officer Implicated | Shocking New Details Emerge in NYC Kidnapping Case
Hegseth Warns of Potential Chinese Military Action Against Taiwan
OPEC+ Agrees to Increase Oil Output for Third Consecutive Month
Jamie Dimon Warns U.S. Bond Market Faces Pressure from Rising Debt
Turkey Detains Istanbul Officials Amid Anti-Corruption Crackdown
Taylor Swift Gains Ownership of Her First Six Albums
Bangkok Ranked World's Top City for Remote Work in 2025
Satirical Sketch Sparks Political Spouse Feud in South Korea
Indonesia Quarry Collapse Leaves Multiple Dead and Missing
South Korean Election Video Pulled Amid Misogyny Outcry
Asian Economies Shift Away from US Dollar Amid Trade Tensions
Netflix Investigates Allegations of On-Set Mistreatment in K-Drama Production
US Defence Chief Reaffirms Strong Ties with Singapore Amid Regional Tensions
Vietnam Faces Strategic Dilemma Over China's Mekong River Projects
Malaysia's First AI Preacher Sparks Debate on Islamic Principles
White House Press Secretary Criticizes Harvard Funding, Advocates for Vocational Training
France to Implement Nationwide Smoking Ban in Outdoor Spaces Frequented by Children
×