Brazil's Daily COVID-19 Death Toll Falls to Lowest Level Since Pandemic Began

By Erin Brady On 11/2/21 at 5:57 PM EDT

With vaccinations across Brazil increasing, the country's death toll attributed to COVID-19 has fallen to its lowest point in 18 months, the Associated Press reported.

According to the Our World in Data website, Brazil recorded 2,188 deaths from October 25 to November 1, the lowest recorded weekly death toll from the virus since April of 2020. The country has fully vaccinated more than half its population.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has often been criticized for handling the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the wake of the devastating infection peak in April of 2021. He has often labeled these criticisms as political correctness despite many of them coming from global health experts.

A Senate committee was formed to investigate the government's COVID protocols and recommended last week that Bolsonaro face criminal charges. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing.

Deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been dropping the last four months and increasing vaccination rates have seen some cities reach almost 90 percent.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

Elizabeth Gomes Pinto, who said her husband Edmar Pereira Pinto died from complications related to COVID-19, shows her necklace featuring photos of them and their daughter during a protest against the way the government handled the nation's response to the pandemic, organized by the "Widows of COVID" group on the Day of the Dead in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 2, 2021. The daily COVID death toll in the country has now fallen to the lowest it has been since April of 2020. AP Photo/Bruna Prado

A greater percentage of Brazilians have had at least one dose than Americans, according to the data site.

The committee's nearly 1,300-page report drew attention to his government's delayed response to pharmaceutical companies' offers to sell millions of vaccines, as well as Bolsonaro's insistent touting of dubious, unproven treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that scientists have long since determined is ineffective.

Brazil has recorded about 609,000 deaths, the world's second-highest total after the U.S.

In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo on Tuesday, dozens of mourners in a group named "The COVID-19 Widows" gathered and criticized the government's management of the health crisis. In Rio, they held a banner that read: "They're not numbers, they're lives."

"My husband died and just two weeks later it would have been his turn to take the vaccine, due to a comorbidity," Katia Araújo, 41, told AP in Sao Paulo. "It disgusts us, because we think, if it had been more organized, planned, he and many other victims wouldn't have died. They would be here."