Usefulness of minimally invasive autopsy in the diagnosis of arboviruses to increase the sensitivity of the Epidemiological Surveillance System in Ceará, Brazil.

Objective: To create a protocol for performing minimally invasive autopsies (MIA) in detecting deaths from arboviruses and report preliminary data from its application in Ceará state, Brazil.

Methods: Training was provided to medical pathologists on MIA.

Results: A protocol was established for performing MIA, defining criteria for sample collection, storage methods, and diagnoses to be carried out according to the type of biological sample; 43 MIAs were performed in three months.

High Effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines in Reducing COVID-19-Related Deaths in over 75-Year-Olds, Ceará State, Brazil.

In Brazil, the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination program has so far prioritized people over 75 years of age. By the end of March 2021, in Ceará State, a total of 313,328 elderly people had received at least one dose of vaccine (45% Oxford-AstraZeneca/Fiocruz and 55% CoronaVac-Sinovac/Butantan), and 159,970 had received two doses (83% CoronaVac-Sinovac/Butantan and 17% Oxford-AstraZeneca/Fiocruz). After a single dose, there was already a significant reduction in COVID 19-related deaths (protection ratio: 19.

COVID-19 Home Deaths without Medical Assistance in Northeastern Brazil.

Since its beginning in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the disease caused by COVID-19 has reached more than 27 million confirmed cases and more than 880 thousand deaths worldwide by early September 2020. Although it is known that some of these deaths may have been influenced by the overload of health systems, the world medical literature lacks data on deaths due to COVID-19 in patients who have not received medical assistance. We conducted a retrospective transversal study to report the clinical and epidemiological profile of the first 200 consecutive cases of home deaths without medical assistance caused by COVID-19 diagnosed by verbal autopsy and real-time PCR in samples of postmortem nasopharyngeal swabs, in the state of Ceara, in Northeastern Brazil.