Brazil to launch new COVID-19 data system as Supreme Court intervenes

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s government vowed on Tuesday to roll out a new platform with detailed coronavirus figures in the midst of a scandal surrounding the removal of a trove of data, which led a Supreme Court justice to order the previous system be reinstated.

The controversy over how Brazil presents its coronavirus numbers came as Sao Paulo’s health department reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths for one day, just as the country’s most populous state was starting to reopen its economy and relax some social distancing rules.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest city, had also started to ease quarantine rules, including by allowing soccer games without spectators, but a judge on Monday overruled decisions by local government, allowing only essential services to operate due to the state’s surging death toll of over 7,000 fatalities.

Over the weekend, the health ministry abruptly removed cumulative totals of coronavirus cases and deaths, causing outrage across the political spectrum. Last week, it pushed back the release of the numbers late into the evening and past Brazil’s main news program.

Health experts had feared that by no longer publishing accumulated totals and only releasing deaths that occurred in the past 24 hours, cases in which someone tested positive for the new coronavirus days after their date of death could disappear from public view. In Brazil, where testing has been haphazard, such cases are common.

Supreme Justice Alexandre de Moraes said in a statement on the court’s website that the health ministry must “fully re-establish the daily dissemination of epidemiological data on the COVID-19 pandemic, including on the agency’s website, under the terms presented until last Thursday.”

Acting Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, speaking at a cabinet meeting broadcast on TV, said there had never been any intention to revise the numbers, nor any suggestion that figures had been over-reported.

Grilled later by a Congressional committee, Pazuello said a new platform would be up and running with real time case curves for every municipal district in the country. He told lawmakers that if the change was not regarded positively, the ministry could revert to the previous system.

Lower house Speaker Rodrigo Maia, who attended the hearing,

said it would take a few days to recover confidence in the ministry’s numbers.

For Justice Moraes, the government’s actions in recent days made it “impossible” to monitor the spread of the virus and to implement adequate and necessary control and prevention policies.

Brazil’s confirmed cases, at more than 700,000, are the second highest in the world behind only the United States, and the death toll is now over 37,000, the world’s third highest.

Also on Tuesday, President Jair Bolsonaro repeated his threat to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization, which he claimed had acted irresponsibly as the pandemic unfolded and lost credibility.