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Sao Paulo, Brazil – Nicole Martins expected her mother, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 last month, to end. But when the 24-year-old arrived at the hospital, the look on his father’s face confirmed the most serious fears.
“I thought he was coming out,” Martins told Al Jazeera. “But then I arrived and saw my father crying.”
Hundreds of thousands of Brazilian families have lost their loved ones against COVID-19 since the coronavirus began spreading like wildfire across the country.
On Thursday, the South American nation surpassed 400,000 coronavirus-related deaths, the second largest in the world after the United States. More than half of them were recorded in 2021, while the pandemic has been the deadliest since the pandemic began.
Experts have attributed several factors to the recent rise, including the most contagious variant of P1, fatigue with restrictive measures such as blockages and the slow spread of vaccines.
“With 50% of deaths caused by COVID occurring this year, it shows that the crisis is completely under control,” Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist at the Fiocruz medical research institute in the Amazonian capital of Manaus, told Al Jazeera.
The Manaus P1 variant was first detected and sick in January they died asphyxiated in their beds due to inadequate oxygen supply.
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist far-right president, has responded to the crisis, including reducing the severity of the disease and questioning masks and vaccines, has been condemned by experts around the world.
A Senate committee has opened an investigation this week in the way the government treats the pandemic.
“We’ve suffered a lot here from getting information and fake news, as the virus is just a bit of a flu,” said Andre Ferreira, head of the Pela Vida (Life Brigade) community that conducts COVID-19 outreach. In poor communities throughout Sao Paulo.
Meanwhile, thousands of families continue to suffer every day as their loved ones die.
The graves lower the coffin in the cemetery of Vila Formosa [Avener Prado/Al Jazeera]
Sao Paulo’s low-income Fazenda is in the Juta district, where the Martins family lives, more than five people were killed in March as a result of the coronavirus in March, including Martins ’mother.
Thalia Novaes ’61-year-old father fought for her life for 30 days and was taken to three different hospitals before she died in March. Like many neighbors, he was buried in the nearby Vila Formosa Cemetery, the largest in Latin America. This has seen queues for people who need to be buried.
“We couldn’t give him the kind of burial we wanted,” Novaes told Al Jazeera. “There were 12 people before us.”
The tremendous growth in demand prompted local authorities to put in a generator and lights so they could bury them at night. Burial staff have also caused physical and mental harm.
“It’s hard to see so many people upset,” said James Gomes, who has been in the grave for eight years.
Thalia Noves, whose father died in March, has a baby in the Fazenda da Juta district [Avener Prado/Al Jazeera]
The socioeconomic conditions in Brazil, one of the most unequal situations in the world, continue to be a decisive factor in the death of coronavirus.
Fazenda da Juta The death rate per 100,000 inhabitants in the Sapopemba district of Sao Paulo is three times higher than in the modern Pinheiros district of the city, according to a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology earlier this year.
“Of all the ways a person can work or learn safely, it’s much harder for the poor,” said Marcelo Neri, an economist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil.
The Juta district is the Fazenda in the Sapopemba district of Sao Paulo. [Avener Prado/Al Jazeera]
Returning to Fazenda da Juta, Martins said he had made efforts to confront his father since his mother died.
Martins still lives under his parents ’house, which is a common organization for many families in Brazil, especially in low-income neighborhoods, and he said he tries to remember better days.
“He asked me for the things he needed, like garlic, something he had forgotten to get in stores,” Martins said of his mother. “I miss those calls now.”
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