Журнал. World association for medical law. The COVID-19 pandemic. Volume 39 2

154 Medicine and Law It wasn´t any different in Brazil but for an additional complication: the country was hit with a triple crisis. Public Health, Economy and Politics. The first case was recorded in Brazil on February 25 th . As this report is being written, a hundred days later, on June 5 th , 2020, the country has now the second largest number of infected people in the world, only behind the United States of America, with official statistics 2 , from the Ministry of Health, pointing to 645.438 confirmed cases, and 35.033 deaths (with 3.500 other deaths still pending confirmation). The official numbers may be underestimated. Among the strategies, adopted to contain the virus spread, testing a large number of the population was not implemented. Studies, conducted by the University of São Paulo (USP), estimated that the number of contaminated people was wrong and could be as much as 15 (fifteen) times bigger than stated in the official statistics, due to under reporting 3 . Large cities, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and other important State Capitals, such as Recife, Manaus and Fortaleza, were the main hotspots but there are concerns and strong signs that infections are moving inland into smaller cities with inadequate provisions of intensive care beds and ventilators. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there was a complete disconnection between the Federal Government and State Administrations. Defending the Swedish solution, of keeping the economy working, with open businesses, and the State Governors defending a more restrictive policy, with social isolation and the opening of only essential services, like pharmacies, supermarkets and food delivery services. These opposite movements slowed down the measures that needed to be implemented to prevent the spreading of the disease, until the Supreme Court (STF) decided that the State administrations had autonomy to decide their own public health policies, including isolation and lockdown 4 . The need to interpret the Constitution could not have arisen at a worst moment, since it was 2 Data extracted from the website https://bing.com/covid, available in June 5 th , 2020. 3 https://saude.abril.com.br/medicina/coronavirus-estimativa-aponta-numero-de-casos-14x- maior-do-que-o-oficial/ 4 https://www.poder360.com.br/coronavirus/stf-decide-que-estados-e-municipios-tem- autonomia-para-impor-isolamento/