Along with the United States and India, Brazil is one of the three countries to have been most hit by the Covid pandemic, both in terms of deaths and confirmed cases (660,000 and 30 million respectively). The doubts we may harbour over the reliability of official data (especially for infections, but also for deaths) are not able to challenge this dismal record.
In a 2021 article, we shed light on the risk factors associated with infection and death from Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic (October 2020). Brazil’s high death toll can be partly explained by an array of socio-economic factors common to other countries, including the state’s poverty, informal economy, ethno-racial inequality and the poor infrastructure of its favelas. Above all, our research shows the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, bears particular responsibility in the spread of the pandemic – we call it the “Bolsonaro effect”.
