Epidemiological Monitoring of COVID-19 in a Brazilian City: The Interface between the Economic Policies, Commercial Behavior, and Pandemic Control

Abstract

The new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic was responsible for one of the worst public health crises in Brazil, which led to the implementation of economic policies to keep social distance. Our aim is to perform an epidemiological analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, in 2021, highlighting the impact of government commercial policies on pandemic control. This is an epidemiological, observational, and analytical study with secondary data. We constructed a regression for count data using the Poisson model. Data adherence to the regression was verified by Cameron & Trivedi and the Likelihood Ratio tests. According to the Poisson model, there was a statistically significant association (p < 0.001) between the adoption of rigid commercial interventions and the drop in deaths. Moreover, we revealed a consistency between the economic policies and the number of screening tests applied, which may have contributed to the deaths behavior. This study shows the importance of institutionalizing economic policies and their positive impacts on pandemic control; however, it raises the discussion about the serious repercussions of these measures on population vulnerability.