Monitoring COVID-19 in Brazil: an application of growth functions to assess the performance of States

Resumo

A proposal for monitoring and evaluating the performance of Brazilian states against COVID-19 is presented, employing a set of non-linear growth functions. This is necessary given its unprecedented nature in the face of public policies known to Brazilian society in the 21st century. The daily data on the accumulated cases of the 27 Brazilian states were collected on the Ministry of Health of Brazil’s website. As of 17-May-2020, the logistic, Gompertz, and exponential functions, respectively in order, are those that best explain the evolution of COVID-19 in Brazilian states. Moreover, it was identified, through a quadrants system, the States that are being more/less efficient in the short/long term. Thus, it is expected that this monitoring and evaluation framework will allow policy-makers to have a better view of the performance of the actions of Brazilian states in confronting COVID-19 over time.