The bars, restaurants and beauty salons of Sao Paulo reopened on Monday as part of a new phase of deconfinement of the economic capital of Brazil, after a hundred days of partial quarantine. The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, however: the megalopolis of more than 12 million inhabitants in south-eastern Brazil has deplored 7,621 dead, 618 in the last week alone.
Bars and restaurants will be able to open at 40% of their capacity for only six hours a day, while respecting physical distance and hygiene measures. During the previous phase of deconfinement, stores and shopping centers had been authorized to reopen with certain restrictions, after two months of paralysis where only the services deemed essential were operating. People were encouraged to stay at home, but without coercive measures.
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Rio de Janeiro reopened last Thursday its bars and restaurants - where the immediate influx has alarmed the authorities and doctors - as well as its beauty salons and gyms. For Rio like Sao Paulo, this movement was considered premature by epidemiologists. "No European country has made the slightest plan of reopening before these indicators (number of deaths and contaminations) as well as the occupancy rate of beds (in intensive care) fall steadily for three weeks" , a lamented Domingos Alves, member of the scientific group Covid-19.
“The most acute phase has passed, we have reached a plateau. Now is the time to start reviving economic activities, ” said the mayor of Sao Paulo, Bruno Covas. According to the elected official, who was himself contaminated, the occupancy rate of the beds in intensive care fell to less than 60%, after having been close to saturation.
Brazil is the second country in the world, behind the United States, in terms of deaths and contaminations of the coronavirus, with nearly 65,000 deaths and more than 1.6 million cases, according to data from the Ministry of Health considered to be greatly underestimated by scientists. Due to the vastness of the Brazilian territory, where 212 million inhabitants live, the pandemic has spread unevenly and is currently migrating from capitals to the interior of different states.
