| Summary: | This paper brings together information about Brazil’s federal, state and state-capital
Covid-19 response policies, mobile-phone mobility data, and original survey data, to
assess whether the World Health Organization’s six criteria for evaluating readiness for
easing response policies are met. We find that this is broadly not the case. Using OxCGRT
for federal, state and some city governments, we report that subnational governments
have enacted many of these policies, and that state-government policies have
significantly affected behaviour (they impact all three available measures of citizens’
mobility). Although shifts in mobility have waned over time, during the period when policy
stringency has been high (from mid-March until the end of May), these shifts have
remained significant.
Our survey of 1,654 people identified shortcomings in citizens’ understandings of how selfisolating people should behave: 95% of the populations of eight state-capital cities
mistakenly believed that self-isolation means that you can leave the house to buy
essential items. Correspondingly, recently symptomatic people were more likely than
those who were unlikely to be contagious to leave home only once or twice within a
fortnight. As reported elsewhere, testing and contact-tracing has been limited in Brazil
(even though citizens have good knowledge of how to recognise Covid-19 symptoms),
and economically vulnerable groups have seen the largest income reductions. We also
find indications that having a high income predicts timely access to testing, and that
income support has made up for at least half of the income losses of many of those
receiving it. Privately schooled children and teenagers have received higher quality
home education than their publicly schooled contemporaries. At the end of the paper
we provide summaries reporting policy environments and survey results for eight state
capitals – Fortaleza, Goiânia, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and
São Paulo.
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