The BRICS response to COVID-19

Since late 2019, SARS-CoV2 pandemic has spread worldwide. After several generations without a severe pandemic, the mixture of health and economic crisis has hit populations in all continents. The high degree of connectivity that States share, enabled by the current transportation and communication technologies, caused different regions of the world to be affected by coronavirus disease at almost the same time. Yet States responses to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic were not the same. This brief focuses on the BRICS countries individual, bilateral and collective responses to the international health crisis caused by coronavirus disease, from the early detection of COVID-19 cases in China in late December 2019 to the current surge of cases in Brazil.


Introduction
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) was first detected in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, on 8 December 2019. SARS-CoV-2 infection can cause coronavirus disease , which can provoke a particular acute respiratory syndrome, leading to hospitalization and possibly death.
On May 27, 2020, the Organizing Committee for Russia's Presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2019-2020 and the Russian BRICS Chairmanship in 2020 announced that it would postpone the BRICS Summit scheduled for July 21 st to 23 rd of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the communiqué released, a new date for the meeting depends "on the development of the epidemiological situation in the states of the group and worldwide" (BRICS, 2020). Russia, the host country of the 2020 Summit, is the third nation with the highest number of cases with reported (370 thousand), behind only from the United States (1.7 million) and from another BRICS country, Brazil (411 thousand). 1 To cite this paper in APA style: Fonseca, P., Spellmann, S., Nascimento, do L. G., Bastrykina, E. & Das, A. (2020). The BRICS response to  Thus, this paper seeks to elucidate the possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on BRICS countries and the BRICS institutions multilateral engagement structure. To do so, this paper first presents the socio-political context of the main policies of each BRICS country in the fight against COVID-19. In addition, this briefing shows how the group has been articulating, presenting the main policies taken since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, this briefing concludes by reflecting on the possible impacts of the pandemic on the BRICS institutions multilateral engagement structure and its members.

BRICS nations individually
Before analyzing the policies of each BRICS country in the fight against COVID-19 and the sociopolitical context in which these nations are enshrined, a brief overview of the current stage of the nationwide infection in each nation should be highlighted. By early June 2020, there was a strong concentration of the number of infected people in both Brazil and Russia. Simultaneously, India occupied the 9 th position in the worldwide number of infections, with 180,621 COVID-19 cases, followed by China 16th with 84,126 and South Africa 30th with 29,240 cases each. Analyzing the number of deaths, the first member of the BRICS to appear is Brazil, which is in 5th place with a total number of 27,878 deaths. India ranks 13th with 5,144 deaths, followed by China (14th) and Russia (15th) with 4,638 and 4,555 respectively. South Africa is in 35th place with 611 deaths.
From what has been analyzed, we can consider that Brazil will be the regional epicenter of Latin America. Within the BRICS, the Latin American country is responsible for 40.2% of those infected and 65% of deaths. For comparison, Russia and India, countries with the highest number of infected and dead, respectively, represent 34.3% and 12%.

China
The pandemic outbreak made China the leader in number of cases for the first months; however, after six months of outbreak, the country is currently the 19 th in number of Covid-19 cases, registering 83,221 reports, with 78,377 recoveriesa 94% recovery accuracy (WORLDOMETER, 2020). On June 7, the Chinese government released the document entitled "Fighting COVID-19: China in Action" which details China's prevention, control and treatment efforts to combat COVID-19, in addition to cooperation with the international community (CGTN, 2020). Divided into four chapters, the document divides the fight against COVID-19 into 5 stages.
The first phase took place between December 27, 2019 and January 9, 2020, and it corresponds to the period when the Covid-19 pandemic surged after unknown pneumonia cases started being detected in the city of Wuhan, Hubei Province, Mainland China, in December 2019. These cases were traced to the Huanan Seafood Market; on 8 January 2020, the cause of pneumonia cases was identified as a new kind of coronavirus (KHAN, 2020). By the end of January 2020, all Chinese provinces already had Covid-19 cases confirmed (CHAPPELL, 2020), and the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared a global health emergency, due to the rising number of cases and an international outbreak (BBC, 2020).
The second stage occurred between January 20 and February 20 and was characterized by an attempt to count the progress of the disease. For this, the control of entry and exit of Wuhan and the sending of medical teams to Hubei and Wuhan were established. At the end of this phase, for the first time in Wuhan, the newly cured and discarded cases outperformed the newly confirmed cases (SCIO, 2020). In the fourth stage, from March 18 to April 28, progress was made in Wuhan, in addition to the continued decline in the number of domestic cases. This decline in the number of domestic cases allowed much of the restrictions and controls in Hubei to be removed, with the exception of wuhan (SCIO, 2020). In parallel to that, during the period, the biggest concern was the cases of COVID-19 coming from outside China, which on March 25 were already confirmed in 23 Chinese provinces.
The last stage, which started on April 29, has been characterized by continuous prevention and control. At this stage, the Chinese government tested almost 10 million citizens of Wuhan (WONK, 2020). Moreover, in order to finally surpass the pandemic, the state developer China National Biotech Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), is developing an inactivated Covid-19 vaccine, currently under a phase-2 clinical trial. Its safety and efficacy has been proved testing more than 2,000 people, and production units are being constructed to supply 200 million doses a year (XINHUA, 2020).
These measures, in terms of international cooperation, may be a promising result, due to the Chinese approach emphasizing the importance of the WHO -China pledged US$2 billion to the organization for the next two yearsand the view on self-developed vaccines as a global public good instead of a profiting patent (WANG, 2020), which has been the approach of private USA companies. Therefore, BRICS cooperation may profit on simultaneous vaccine productions being conducted among its countries, with shared knowledge and technology transfers to definitely tackle the pandemic.

Russia
On January 29, 2020, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin ordered the creation of a unified federal headquarters for the fight against coronavirus. Its responsibilities include: monitoring the current situation of coronavirus in the country and the world, preparing recommendations to state bodies and regions, monitoring and coordinating work to prevent diseases (RUSSIA, 2020). In June, Russia is going to start providing its Covid patients the first approved drug to tackle the pandemic. The so-called antiviral Avifavir is going to be ministered to patients from June 11, and its production is expected to be able to treat sixty thousand patients per month. Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) has already funded 300 million rubles to ChemRar, a drug manufacturer, in an attempt to turn the Avifavir viable on treating Covid patients (OSBORN, 2020). In addition,     (Ramaphosa, 2020a).
However, the number of cases continued to increase, reaching 927 cases. Thus, despite initial efforts by the South African government, the country declares lockdown 7 between March 27 and April 17.
During that first lockdown period, the number of cases jumped from 927 to 2606 (Ourworldindata, 2020), forcing the government to extend the lockdown until the end of April. In addition to awareness policies, increased port and airport entry controls and lockdown, assisted by a committee of scientists 8 , the national COVID-19 command council has also put mass testing of the population into practice.
Despite the control actions, the number of COVID-19 cases in South Africa has increased dramatically. In a statement on June 8, President Ramaphosa said that more than half of all cases since the outbreak began were recorded between May 24 and June 7 (Ramaphosa, 2020b (1156).

Brazil
The first Brazilian confirmed case was reported on February 26, 2020, in São Paulo. In the first stages of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Brazil, the infection was largely due to imported cases. Self-declared travel history and genetic analysis confirmed that the first detected case in Brazil, was acquired via 7 During this period the borders were closed, allowing only the transport of food and essential goods, in addition there was a ban on movement between provinces, metropolitan and district areas and agglomerations, except for funerals, but with a maximum limitation of 50 people. See: <https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/03/26/national-lockdown-regulations/>. 8 According to Wiysonge (2020)
In the multilateral field, in addition to the World Health Organization and other regional bodies (SCO, SAARC, MERCOSUR, African Union), the BRICS initiative emerges as an important tool to combat COVID-19. In a meeting held on April 28, the BRICS members agreed to allocate USD 15 billion to fight the pandemic. On April 30, the New Development Bank (NBD) approved a US$1 billion project for India to combat COVID-19 (NBD, 2020). In the meeting held on May 7, the Health Ministers of the BRICS member countries addressed the pandemic together.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated existing trends, such as the shift of the geopolitical axis to Asia and animosities between China and the USA. Multilateralism has also undergone significant transformations. However, among the few conclusions that the current crisis offers is that problems have become global, thus demanding globally coordinated responses. In this way, the BRICS countries can act as catalysts for global change.