Sao Paulo, Brazil – Brazil is preparing for what could be its deadliest month in the coronavirus pandemic. The vast cemeteries, where new graves are dug non-stop, show the scale of the disaster. US health officials say the daily death toll in Brazil, COVID-19, will reach almost 3,500.
Data from Johns Hopkins University show that nearly 355,000 people died of COVID-19 in Brazil – the highest confirmed number of deaths 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 has not only spread to the United States, but, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has become the second most common variant of coronavirus in the country.
According to CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez, one of the reasons people are so worried about what is happening in Brazil is that the more the virus spreads in any region, the more likely it is to move.
The P-1 variant is just one example of these mutations. The strain is considered more contagious – and in densely populated neighborhoods in Brazilian cities, social distancing is virtually impossible.
Bojorquez visited Paraisopolis, the second largest “favela” in the Sao Paulo megacity. Favelas are low-income neighborhoods, often located in the shadow of rich enclaves. Life was quite difficult in Paraisopolis before the pandemic, but the virus has exacerbated poverty, and a bad economy means that food insecurity now affects more than half of Brazil’s population.
A resident, Antonio, told CBS News that if he did not accept free meals in the community, he would worry about how he would receive money to eat – and said the crime might be his only option.
Marcus Dos Santos works for the non-profit group “Hands of Mary”, which offers about 3,000 lunches a day to the people of the Sao Paulo favela.
“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 believes the Brazilian government has failed to do.
President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized for blatantly ignoring science and rejecting calls to block. In Sao Paulo, some of the limited restrictions were in fact picked up Monday, with sports games allowed to resume without crowds, along with picking up food at bars and restaurants.
The measures were relaxed despite the fact that just last week, one in four COVID-related deaths worldwide took place in Brazil. Cemetery workers are literally forced to turn the soil 24 hours a day.
AMANDA PEROBELLI / REUTERS
Funerals take place one after the other. Soon, CBS News was in a large cemetery, and Bojorquez and his team watched seven families say goodbye to their loved ones. There, in the cemetery, they have their only chance to say goodbye, because burials are not allowed due to the pandemic.
Lourival Panhozzi, who runs the Brazilian association of funeral directors, said the coronavirus completely overwhelmed the health system. He said that people who would otherwise have managed to receive treatment for conditions such as heart disease find hospitals unable to receive them and, unfortunately, become even more deaths accused, if indirectly, of the virus.
The pain seen in the cemeteries is further aggravated – for fear that things will not improve soon.