Table_1_Underreporting of Death by COVID-19 in Brazil's Second Most Populous State.XLSX

The COVID-19 pandemic brings to light the reality of the Brazilian health system. The underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in the state of Minas Gerais (MG), where the second largest population of the country is concentrated, reveals government unpreparedness, as there is a low capacity of testing in the population, which prevents the real understanding of the general panorama of SARS-CoV-2 dissemination. The goals of this research are to analyze the causes of deaths in different Brazilian government databases (Civil Registry Transparency Portal and InfoGripe) and to assess whether there are sub-records showing an unexpected increase in the frequency of deaths from causes clinically similar to COVID-19. A descriptive and quantitative analysis of the number of deaths by COVID-19 and similar causes was performed in different databases. Our results demonstrate that different official sources had a discrepancy of 109.45% between these data referring to the same period. There was also a 758.57% increase in SARI deaths in 2020, when compared to the average of previous years. Finally, it was shown that there was an increase in the rate of pneumonia and respiratory insufficiency (RI) by 6.34 and 6.25%, respectively. In conclusion, there is an underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in MG due to the unexplained excess of deaths caused by SARI, respiratory insufficiency, and pneumonia compared to previous years.

COVID-19疫情的爆发，凸显了巴西医疗体系的现实状况。米纳斯吉拉斯州（MG）作为国内人口第二多的州，其COVID-19死亡病例的未充分报告，暴露了政府在应对准备上的不足，因为该州在人群中的检测能力较低，这阻碍了对SARS-CoV-2传播整体态势的真正理解。本研究的目的是分析巴西不同政府数据库（民事登记透明度门户和InfoGripe）中死亡原因，并评估是否存在显示与COVID-19临床相似原因死亡频率意外增加的子记录。对COVID-19及其相似原因导致的死亡人数在各个数据库中进行了描述性和定量分析。我们的结果表明，不同官方来源在同一时期的数据中存在109.45%的差异。与往年平均水平相比，2020年SARI死亡人数增加了758.57%。最后，肺炎和呼吸衰竭（RI）的发病率分别增加了6.34%和6.25%。综上所述，由于与往年相比SARI、呼吸衰竭和肺炎死亡人数的未解释性超额，米纳斯吉拉斯州对COVID-19死亡病例的报告存在不足。