Heitor Evangelista¹, Sérgio J Gonçalves Junior¹*, Eduardo Delfino Sodré¹, Juliana Nogueira¹, Rodrigo Goldenberg-Barbosa¹, Newton Magalhães¹, Angela MG dos Santos², Ricardo HM Godoi³, Cesar Amaral¹, Marcio Cataldo G da Silva¹, Daniel A Junger de Oliveira¹ and Luís Cristóvão Porto²

¹Laboratory of Radioecology and Global Changes (LARAMG)/DBB/IBRAG, Rio de Janeiro State Univeristy (Uerj), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

*Corresponding Author: Sérgio J Gonçalves Junior, LARAMG - Laboratory of Radioecology and Global Changes/DBB/IBRAG, Uerj, Pavilhão Haroldo L, Cunha/DBB/IBRAG, Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro State University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Received: May 02, 2022; Published: August 03, 2022

Abstract

For many underdeveloped countries, strategies implemented by social communities allied to scientific knowledge may be a rote to attenuate the rapid spread of Covid-19 cases and allow services to the population. This work presents a joint effort collaboration between scientists and underserved community groups from a Brazilian slum/Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro City in the fight against Covid-19. Measurements of contamination in the air near the ground and georeferencing of data of infected people were regressed with sanitization activities aiming at reducing the Covid-19 incidence. We monitored aerosol containing SARS-Cov-2 virus in outdoor ambient air using various virus collection mediums (solid, liquid, and gelatinous substrates) at different aerodynamic sizes. We implemented a local statistics survey for the Covid-19 database correlated with varying sanitization levels between April 2020 and June 2021 developed in the Santa Marta slum. We detected the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the air near the ground in diameters ranging from 0.25 to 0.5 µm, demonstrating that there is a circulation of the virus in the slum atmosphere. We demonstrate that Covid-19 cases for the Santa Marta slum were significatively lowered with improved sanitization levels (r = -0.74). Despite previous publications that discarded the use of sanitization as a relevant tool in the fight against Covid-19, our results suggest that profits can be achieved in mitigating Covid-19 in underserved community sites. Furthermore, a permanent sanitization activity may induce positive social behaviour to combat Covid-19.

Keywords: Covid-19; Virus Variants; Santa Marta Slum; Sanitization; Aerosols

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Citation

Citation: Heitor Evangelista., et al. “How Social Engagement Against Covid-19 in a Brazilian Slum Helped Mitigate Rising Statistics". Acta Scientific Microbiology 5.9 (2022): 24-40 .

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Heitor Evangelista., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.