According to researchers, the state of Ceará is expected to become the new epicenter. Projections indicate that there will be 3,000 cases by early April.
According to projections made by researchers from the CoVida Network, an initiative of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), everything indicates that Ceará could become the first Brazilian state to reach the peak of infections by the new coronavirus. The forecast is for April 25.
In addition, the research report estimates that the state should surpass the mark of 3,000 patients infected with the virus this week, making it the second most affected state in the country.
Number of cases
According to data from the Ceará Health Department (Sesa), released this Sunday (5), there are already 976 infected people in Ceará. And there have been 26 deaths recorded from the disease. The results are from one month after the first confirmation of infection in the state.
The CoVida Network bulletin shows that Ceará should reach the number of 3,053 people infected by the new coronavirus this Wednesday (8). With these numbers, it surpasses Rio de Janeiro, which currently has 2,887 infections. And it will be behind only São Paulo, which has 11,684 cases.
The calculation also indicates that Brazil should have around 21 thousand cases of infected patients and more than 500 deaths from the disease on the same day.
Research
The group, made up of statisticians, epidemiologists, physicists, computer scientists, economists and communications experts, among others, calculated the infection's reproduction potential to find out how quickly the virus spreads in Brazilian states. In this way, the researchers considered how a person with COVID-19 can spread the disease in the regions they analyzed. Thus, they identified the reproduction factor, R0, of 2.56, in Ceará.
Values of R0 above 1 classify the location as an “expanding epidemic”. With a rate similar to that of Ceará, with R0 above 2, are states such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Distrito Federal, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. In Italy, a country where the spread of the virus occurred rapidly, the R0 rate is 3.
In addition to the transmission rate, researchers also assess the number of people cured and the number of deaths due to Covid-19. They use a model called SIR (Susceptible, Infected and Recovered) for this purpose. The study takes into account that patients discharged after Covid-19 cannot be infected again, but considers that other studies have indicated the possibility of them becoming ill a second time with the virus.