Edgar Fabián Manrique Hernández, UIS graduate doctor and current student of the UIS Master’s Degree in Epidemiology, Professor Álvaro Javier Idrovo, attached to the Department of Public Health and Julián Fernández Niño, professor at the Universidad del Norte, published the article “Report from Bolsonaro’s Brazil: The consequences of ignoring science”, in The International Journal of Health Services.

In this study they evaluated the quality of data on new cases and accumulated deaths from the pandemic in Brazil using Benford’s law (or the first digits). The interest in this evaluation arose from the presidential denialism, the high lethality observed in the first months of the pandemic and the difficulties of the Brazilian federal and local system for its management, which was reflected in two changes of Ministers of Health, in April and May of 2020.

The findings show that, between July and August, a deterioration in the quality of the data is observed, first in mortality and then in new cases of SARS-CoV-2, which leaves doubts about the handling of the pandemic data in Brazil.

The full text of the article is available for free at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0020731420968446