Sao Paulo, Brazil Brazil supports the deadliest month yet in the coronavirus pandemic. The large cemeteries, where new graves are being dug all the time, show the extent of the disaster. U.S. health officials estimate that the daily COVID-19 death toll in Brazil is expected to hit nearly 3,500.
Johns Hopkins University data shows that nearly 355,000 people died of COVID-19 in Brazil – the highest confirmed death toll in any country except the United States.
AMANDA PEROBELLI / REUTERS
The crisis is fueled by a dangerous variant, known as P-1, which was first detected in Brazil. The strain not only spread to the US, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it became the second most common coronavirus variant in the country.
As CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports, one of the reasons the world is so concerned about what’s happening in Brazil is the fact that the more the virus spreads in any region, the more likely it is to mutate. .
The P-1 variant is only one example of these mutations. The tension is probably more contagious – and in the densely populated neighborhoods of Brazil’s cities, social distance is virtually impossible.
Bojorquez visited Paraisopolis, the second largest “favela” in the large capacity of Sao Paulo. Favelas are sprawling low-income neighborhoods, often located in the shadow of affluent enclaves. Life was very difficult in Paraisopolis before the pandemic, but the virus intensified poverty, and a paralyzed economy means that food insecurity now affects more than half of Brazil’s population.
One resident, Antonio, told CBS News that if he did not accept free meals in the community, he would worry about how he would get money to eat – and he made it clear that crime could be his only option.
Marcus Dos Santos works for the non-profit group ‘Hands of Maria’, which delivers approximately 3,000 lunches to the residents of the Sao Paulo favela every day.
“At this worst moment, I’m trying to give the best of myself to other people,” Dos Santos told Bojorquez.
He said he was helping to take responsibility for the people of his country – something he believed the Brazilian government had failed to do.
President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for science blatantly ignores and refuses to impose calls for closures. Some of the restricted restrictions were in Sao Paulo lifted on Mondays, with sports matches allowed to resume without crowds, along with snacks at pubs and restaurants.
The measures have been relaxed despite the fact that one of the four COVID-related deaths worldwide occurred in Brazil just last week. Cemetery workers are literally forced to turn the ground 24 hours a day.
AMANDA PEROBELLI / REUTERS
Funerals take place one right after the other. In the short time that CBS News has been at one sprawling cemetery, Bojorquez and his team have seen seven families say goodbye to their loved ones. There in the cemetery they get their only chance to say goodbye, because funerals are not allowed due to the pandemic.
Lourival Panhozzi, who heads Brazil’s association of funeral directors, said the coronavirus had completely overwhelmed the healthcare system. He said people who could otherwise be treated for diseases such as heart disease find that hospitals are unable to take it up, and unfortunately they are still being blamed for deaths, if indirectly, on the virus.
The pain seen at the cemeteries is getting worse – for fear that things will not get better soon.