A doctor in Brazil said this week that a lack of COVID-19 tests is keeping the number of children dying in the country artificially low.
The BBC reported that an estimated 1,300 babies have died as a result of the coronavirus, almost twice as much as official data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health, which estimates that just over 500 babies have died.
Fatima Marinho, an epidemiologist and senior advisor to the non-governmental organization Vital Strategies, shared her research with the news center. She said a lack of testing keeps the actual count lower than it actually is.
Marinho found there were 10 times more deaths in children from unexplained acute respiratory syndrome than reported in previous years, the BBC reported. She estimated that between February 2020 and March 15, 2021, the virus killed 2,060 children under the age of 9, including 1,302 babies.
Conversely, the Brazilian Ministry of Health estimated that 852 children under the age of 9 have died, including 518 babies.
Marinho told the BBC she has seen an increase in a condition called multi-system inflammatory syndrome, a rare but serious condition that can cause inflammation of vital organs. The BBC noted that the condition does not account for all deaths.
A survey of more than 1,700 children and teenagers led by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the condition appeared two to five weeks after the initial infection.
About 38 percent of newborns up to the age of 4 years experienced low blood pressure or shock, and 44 percent were admitted to intensive care.
Brazil is one of the hardest hit countries in the coronavirus pandemic. The country has registered more than 13.6 million coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic, behind only India and the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins University
The country has also reported more than 361,000 cumulative deaths, only second only to the US.