Source: UF Emerging Pathogens Institute
Brazil's COVID-19 crisis has steadily worsened this spring. With only 2.7% of the world’s population, Brazil ranks third globally for the total number of people infected with COVID-19, and it is surpassed only by the US and India. It has the regrettable distinction of ranking second globally for deaths due to COVID-19, at slightly more than 395,000.
Countries where the virus is spreading out of control lead researchers to ask, Why? What factors might explain why the virus infects and kills so many people in one country, but not in others?
Burton Singer, a UF mathematician who focuses on modeling infectious disease dynamics, collaborated with researchers from Brazil and Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health to understand the spread of COVID-19 throughout Brazil. Their work was recently published in Science.
“We knew it was erratic and going in different ways,” says Singer, a professor in UF’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute. “And initially we naively thought that there would be a summary narrative that would describe Brazil as a country. But that turned out to be totally false.”
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