Excess mortality associated with COVID-19 in Brazil: 2020-2021.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate excess mortality in Brazil from January 2020 to April 2021, according to the primary causes of death registered in the Brazilian Mortality Information System (MIS). METHODS: Cross-sectional study with data extracted from the MIS. Excess deaths were examined by the primary cause of death according to 11 grouped causes. Autoregressive models used mortality data from 2015 to 2019 to predict expected deaths from January 2020 to April 2021. Excess deaths were calculated as the difference between the observed and the expected number of deaths. RESULTS: Total excess deaths of 370 055 were observed in the studied period, corresponding to a ratio of observed to expected of 1.14 in 2020 and 1.40 in 2021. Excess deaths were seen in three groups: symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified; other diseases of the respiratory system and coronavirus infection, unspecified site. CONCLUSIONS: The excess mortality in Brazil in these 16 months was 1.20 times greater than the previous year. The increase in not elsewhere classified causes and causes of death associated to COVID-19 indicate caution about the negative balance for some causes. Furthermore, the inequalities of mortality reporting systems in low- and middle-income countries in relation to underestimation of mortality still need to be addressed.

[Abortion liberation: the opinion of medical and law students, São Paulo, Brazil]. / Liberação do aborto: opinião de estudantes de Medicina e de Direito, São Paulo, Brasil.

The results of a survey carried out with the participation of 155 medical and 141 law students are given. Of the total of 296 students, 142 agreed with the freeing of abortion from legal restrictions, 144 agreed with such restrictions and 6 gave no opinion. Of the 144, 12 rejected abortion under any circumstances. The differences were analysed by sex and school. The statistical analysis did not show significance at the level of 5%.