Brazil experienced its deadliest month since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March with more than 66,000 deaths.
"We have never seen in the history of Brazil a single event killing so many people in 30 days," said Miguel Nicolelis, coordinator of the Scientific Committee formed by the Northeastern States of Brazil against the pandemic.
"We are at the worst time, with records of deaths and contaminations, which indicates that April will still be very bad", also estimates the epidemiologist Ethel Maciel, professor at the Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES).
Because very worrying, the week of March 21 to 27 was the one with the most contaminations recorded (nearly 540,000).
This augurs new records for the influx of intensive care patients and deaths in two weeks in this country of 212 million inhabitants.
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Brazilian hospitals are almost saturated: in 18 of the 27 Brazilian states, 90% of intensive care beds reserved for Covid are occupied.
In several states, healthcare workers have already started allocating intensive care beds to those patients who are most likely to survive.
At least 230 confirmed or suspected coronavirus patients died in March for lack of finding a bed in intensive care in the suburbs of Sao Paulo, capital of the richest state in the country.
The funerals are linked day and night to cope with the increase in the number of dead.
In four cemeteries in São Paulo - one of the states hardest hit by the pandemic - grave-digging staff work in the middle of the night, dressed in overalls of white protection and masks.
Under the eyes of grieving families, the men of the funeral directors place the coffins one after the other, lit by the glow of a large spot installed nearby.
In just over a year, the Covid-19 has killed 317,646 people in Brazil, a toll only surpassed by the United States.
For Dr Nicolelis "it is even very possible" that Brazil will reach half a million deaths by July.
According to doctors, the violence of this second wave is due to several factors: loosening of health precautions during the end of the year and carnival holidays, the emergence of more contagious variants and the absence of a national policy to fight against the Covid, in a country where President Jair Bolsonaro still asks people to take risks by "continuing to go to work".