Janimayri Forastieri de Almeida

Objetivos: analisar quantitativa e comparativamente os óbitos por COVID-19 nos quatro maiores municípios do Norte Fluminense (Campos dos Goytacazes e Macaé) e Baixada Litorânea do Rio de Janeiro (Cabo Frio e Rio das Ostras), situando-os no contexto estadual e nacional. Métodos: usamos dados do Registro Civil e informações demográficas para elaborar um quadro geral da pandemia até a 41a semana epidemiológica sob vários aspectos. Resultados: caracterizamos a evolução da pandemia, diferenciando os padrões conforme localidade. Encontramos uma dependência universal exponencial do coeficiente de mortalidade com a idade e uma maior letalidade na população masculina em relação à feminina, variável entre os municípios. O recorte racial também é examinado e discutido. Determinamos que a COVID-19 representa fração importante das causas de morte em 2020, estando associada à significativo excesso de óbitos em relação à 2019 e à alteração dos padrões de mortalidade por outras causas, com implicações relevantes para a saúde pública. Conclusões: a mortalidade é um indicador efetivo e poderoso para a compreensão da infecção pelo SARS-CoV-2 e sua pandemia, sendo sua análise local um instrumento indispensável para a construção de políticas públicas para o enfrentamento da pandemia e gestão da saúde pública.

Since the first reported case of COVID-19 in Brazil, the public and private educational system started to close. Up to November 2020, scientific discussions about the return of schooling activities have been rarely performed by the national scientific community and police-makers. The great delay of school returning in Brazil contrasts with successful international strategies of school reopening worldwide and seems counterintuitive with the reopening of non-essential activities. Here, important issues to be considered before and during school reopening are reviewed and discussed. COVID-19 testing is essential to avoid disease spreading, but high cost of individual RT-qPCRs impairs an extensive testing strategy for school returning. To reduce costs and increase the speed of diagnosis, we tested the efficiency of a pooled-sample PCR strategy in a cohort of the educational staff in the city of Macaé/RJ, finding five asymptomatic individuals (0,66%) among the 754 people tested. Thus, a polled-sample PCR testing strategy of the educational staff might prevent infection spreading in schools at a reasonable cost. We discuss how our test strategy could be coupled with internationally recognized safety rules to allow for a safe school return and how countries from different world regions are dealing with educational activities during COVID-19 pandemic.

The present article discusses the dynamics of system resilience, focusing on the case of a university college in Brazil. It investigates the experience of lecturers of this educational institution in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is exploratory basic qualitative research, aiming at understanding how the university college self-organized in this period. This research focused on local adaptation processes and was conducted through interviews with a sample of lecturers from the study programs offered by the university college. A text analysis software was used to analyze the data generated according to the three aspects of social-ecological resilience. The analytical framework of this research applies the concept of resilience in a socio-ecological system to discuss emergent organizational changes and learning in higher education. Systems resilience highlights adaptation processes characterized by an interplay of previous experience and emerging new knowledge. The findings describe the emergence of new practices and learning as faculty members encountered challenges brought on by the pandemic. Beyond learning new technological tools, the pandemic raised awareness of students’ socio-economic backgrounds in the context of inequality in Brazil. However, resilience requires open communication among staff and across organizational levels about adaptation processes that have taken place during the pandemic.

Objective: To analyze quantitatively and comparatively the deaths by COVID-19 of the four largest municipalities in the North of Rio de Janeiro and Baixada Litorânea of Rio de Janeiro, within the national context. Methods: We used data from the Civil Registry and demographic information to elaborate a general picture of the pandemic up to the 31st epidemiological week in several aspects: evolution, scope, age, sex, race and impact on other causes of death. Results: We characterized the evolution of the pandemic. We found an exponential dependence on the mortality rate by age and a higher lethality in the male population. We determined that COVID-19 represents an important fraction of the causes of death in 2020, being associated with a significant excess of deaths in relation to 2019 and also with the change in mortality patterns due to other causes. Conclusion: Mortality is an effective and powerful indicator for understanding the infection and its pandemic, and it must be taken into account during the construction of public policies to deal with it.