Brazil COVID cases still soaring among unprotected majority

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's slowly unfolding vaccination program appears to have slowed the pace of deaths among the nation's elderly, according to death certificate data, but COVID-19 is still taking a rising toll as unprotected younger people get sick.

People 80 and over accounted for a quarter of the nation's COVID-19 deaths in February, but less than a fifth in March, according to data provided to The Associated Press on Tuesday by Arpen-Brasil, an association which represents thousands of the notaries who record death certificates in Brazil.

But relatively few beyond the elderly have been protected: Less than 9 million of Brazil’s 210 million residents have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.

Confirmed new infections from the virus among all age groups jumped about 70 percent between December and March: Reported cases rose from 1.3 million in December to 1.5 million in January, to 1.36 million in February and to 2.25 million in March.

But among people aged 20 to 59 the death toll tripled from February to March, hitting 23,366, according to the notaries.

Gustavo Renato Fiscarelly, the president of Arpen-Brasil, said the figures show the importance of vaccines as well as the danger of people letting down their guard. “There needs to be precaution by younger people, who have been proportionally more affected by the number of deaths.”

Heath experts blame that lack of caution for a similar pattern across the continent.

“We are not acting like a region in the midst of a worsening outbreak,” Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, head of the Pan-American Health Organization, said last week, complaining that the regional weekly death toll was higher than at any point in 2020.

“Despite ongoing transmission in many...