COVID death rates high among unprotected majority in Brazil
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Cemetery workers lowering the coffin of a person who died from COVID-19 into a gravesite at the Vila Formosa cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil
The slowly began vaccination drive is said to have reduced the COVID related deaths among Brazil's elderly people while the infection rate is higher among unprotected youngsters, according to official data.
The data provided by the Arpen-Brasil, a body that records the deaths in the country, said that the death rate among people aged above 80 has dropped significantly after the beginning of vaccination drives.
However, a major part of the population remains unvaccinated, meaning younger people are still at the mercy of the virus, with death tolls tripling amongst the 20-59 age groups from February to March.
Less than 9 million people have been vaccinated in Brazil so far with confirmed new infections from the virus among all age groups jumping about 70 per cent 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.
As President Jair Bolsonaro continues to decry demands for greater preventative measures and a full-scale national lockdown, more aggressive mutant strains of the virus are making its ways into the country. So far, Brazil has accounted for 375,000 deaths from the virus, a toll second only to that of the United States' count.