Moreover, there were also episodes of communication gaps between the government and the population. In June 2020, the Federal Government stopped sharing the total number of deaths caused by COVID-19, in one of the peaks of the pandemic, and deleted the data from their website [7]. In face of this reality, an independent group of communication vehicles needed to start to work to collect and to share the data about the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is well known that trustworthy, timely and accessible public health data is essential for policy and decision-making, as well as to help epidemiologists and other health/science professionals to understand, track and map the spread of a certain disease. During the pandemic, Brazil used two main health information systems to notify suspected and confirmed cases of Covid-19.

For hospitalized patients in Brazil, the Ministry of Health incorporated testing for SARS-CoV-2 into the existing surveillance for severe acute respiratory illness (SARI). Case notification is compulsory, and the records are stored in the SIVEP-Gripe (Influenza Epidemiological Surveillance Information System). This system was created during the influenza H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and has been maintained since then to monitor SARI cases and for the surveillance of unusual events associated with this syndrome in the country. The other system E-SUS Notifica was launched in March of 2020, especially to aid in the pandemic. It is an online system that health surveillance workers can input data in it and other health professionals are able to follow it in real time.

Despite the existence of these systems, there is still no accurate and updated data on the Covid-19 spread. These systems depend on manual data input, which requires sufficient qualified professionals to type, treat and analyze the huge amount of data that the notifications produced. Some Municipal governments, entities responsible for feeding these platforms, were overwhelmed by the task. Not only did they have to update these systems, but also they had to daily report to the population the number of cases, deaths, hospitalizations, etc., and keep up with their normal work demand. This created a delay in the data input, especially in cities where the Health Surveillance team was scarce.

Therefore, there should have been more investments in hiring frontline health workers and supporting and equipping Municipal Health Departments. Sadly, many professionals in the health area, as well as politicians, forget that data input, treatment, analysis and communication is essential to understand the spread of any disease and to take effective measures against it. Without the existence of trustworthy and timely data, we are blind to the real situation of the disease in the population.