Rio de Janeiro, the tourist capital of Brazil, saw its bars, cafes and restaurants reopen on Thursday July 2 after three months of paralysis due to the Covid-19 epidemic. For this new stage of resumption of activity, these establishments – which were only authorized to operate with home deliveries – can now receive customers up to 50% of their reception capacity, with 2 m between each table and preferably in open spaces.
Gyms, beauty salons and tattoo parlors have also been allowed to reopen in the Wonderful City, which has 6.7 million residents, but take strict precautions. During previous phases of the deconfinement plan, the other businesses had been authorized to reopen and the local football championship had resumed behind closed doors.
The reopening responds to economic concerns, while many of these establishments, closed since the end of March, are in dire financial straits. "There is nothing to celebrate, we have been engaged in this fight since March", Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella said on Wednesday. "Decreasing demand for intensive care beds and stabilizing death toll signals that we reached a grim peak in May before falling to current levels", he assured.
The city of Rio de Janeiro has reported 68 deaths in the past twenty-four hours, and had peaked at 227 on June 3. Although in the state of Rio, as in all the others in Brazil, there is a movement of the pandemic inland, specialists warn that the contamination rate remains high and that the gradual deconfinement could put again hospital structures under pressure.
An “early and untimely” reopening
For Professor Roberto Medonho, director of the research division of Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, this reopening is "Precocious and untimely". The rate of contamination per infected person rose to 1.51. "This figure will increase with reopenings", he predicts.
"This reopening plan is a disaster, we could have saved many lives with tighter confinement as early as April", adds Margareth Dalcomo, specialist at the Fiocruz benchmark public health institute. Even at the height of the pandemic, no coercive measure was taken to force the population to stay at home, the municipal decree being limited to a ban on visiting the beaches and the closing of shops considered non-essential.
The state of Rio de Janeiro, the second most affected after that of Sao Paulo, has recorded more than 10,000 deaths – including 6,618 in the city of Rio alone. Brazil surpassed the 60,000 Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday, after registering an additional 1,038 deaths in twenty-four hours, with 1.44 million contaminations.
On Wednesday evening, Congress decided to postpone the October municipal elections for more than a month due to the pandemic. The first round will take place on November 15 and the second on November 29.
