How social engagement against Covid-19 in a Brazilian Slum helped mitigate rising statistics
Abstract
Objectives
For many underdeveloped countries, strategies implemented by social communities allied to scientific knowledge may be a rote to attenuate the rapid spread of Covid-19 cases and allow services to the population. This work presents a joint effort collaboration between scientists and underserved community groups from a Brazilian slum/Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro City in the fight against Covid-19. Measurements of contamination in the air near the ground, georeferencing of data of infected people, were regressed with sanitization activities aiming at reducing the Covid-19 incidence.
Methods
We monitored aerosol containing SARS-Cov-2 virus in outdoor ambient air using various virus collection mediums (solid, liquid, and gelatinous substrates) at different aerodynamic sizes. We implemented a local statistics survey for the Covid-19 database correlated with varying sanitization levels between April 2020 and June 2021 developed in the Santa Marta slum.
Findings
We detected the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the air near the ground in diameters ranging from 0.25 to 0.5 µm, demonstrating that there is a circulation of the virus in the slum atmosphere. We demonstrate that Covid-19 cases for the Santa Marta slum were significatively lowered with improved sanitization levels (r = −0.74).
Conclusions
Despite previous publications that discarded the use of sanitization as a relevant tool in the fight against Covid-19, our results suggest that profits can be achieved in mitigating Covid-19 in underserved community sites. Furthermore, a permanent sanitization activity may induce positive social behavior for the sake of combating Covid-19.
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