The Geography of COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Conflicts, Tensions, and Challenges

Abstract

The frightening capacity for contamination and the impossibility of a medical-scientific response to tackle the coronavirus’s spread revealed the fragility of the human race in the face of a powerful invisible agent. To date, there are more than twelve million people infected, and more than half a million deaths worldwide. 2020 has already become a “historic” year when we need to change our relationship with nature and our society’s priorities. In addition to the poor historical conditions of basic sanitation and housing and the concentration of income in Brazil, the virus found some critical ally, which the present chapter will focus. Even having a public and universal Unified Health System (UHS), Brazil, unfortunately, became an international highlight in the number of contaminated and killed, becoming a true negative reference in the fight against the pandemic. In Rio de Janeiro, we endeavored to draw a panel of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on its territory. From its entry via global contacts in the more affluent areas, the “virus of globalization” gradually reached the suburban areas and, finally, the metropolitan peripheries which are more impoverished and susceptible to problems. In this sense, the Fluminense Lowland, formed by thirteen cities and where the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) is located, has become a favorable space for contamination and dispersion of the pandemic, promoting a dynamic of accelerated expansion and aggressive lethality. Visiting the pandemic’s impacts on the metropolitan peripheries is the great research challenge for all researchers committed to the community and social justice.