Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic: the numbers and lessons that will stay with us forever

In Brazil, the first patient with coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) was diagnosed on February 26, 2020. He lived in the city of São Paulo (SP), Brazil, and had recently returned from a trip to Europe. Over the next couple of weeks, most of the new cases of COVID-19 had an identifiable epidemiological risk factor – either having travelled abroad or been in contact with a patient known to have severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. However, as initial containment measures failed, the epidemic that had started in the high-income brackets quickly spread to the whole community, hitting people of low-income brackets in a particularly hard manner. ^{( )} As of August 31 ^st , 2020, a total of 257,778 cases had been confirmed in the city of São Paulo, and 11,400 deaths had been attributed to COVID-19 (https://www.seade.gov.br/coronavirus/).

In this context, the public and private health systems in São Paulo were forced to make adjustments, often coming together to allow rational and efficient use of limited medical resources. Several public health measures put into place in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, including city-level quarantine and mandatory widespread use of cloth or surgical masks later on. However, establishing temporary field hospital facilities and appointing selected public hospitals as reference centers for treatment of COVID-19 were the cornerstone of the public healthcare policy.

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