One in four Brazilians aged 16 or over says they have been diagnosed with Covid since the beginning of the pandemic, representing about 42 million infected people, according to a survey by Datafolha. The number is almost double the total number of officially registered cases in the country.
Datafolha carried out the survey by telephone on January 12 and 13, with 2,023 people aged 16 and over in all Brazilian states. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.
According to the survey, 25% of those interviewed said they had taken a test that confirmed the infection by the virus, which means 41.95 million people have been infected since March 2020. The official records, collected by the press consortium, say that there were 22.8 million confirmed cases for the disease throughout the pandemic period.
The official data of positive cases gathered by the consortium refer to all ages. Datafolha's data only indicate infections in those over 16, which points to an even greater underreporting in the country's statistics.
For experts interviewed by Folha, the difference between the numbers is not surprising, since the country has problems in the systematization of data on infected people.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon