In 2020, 98.6% (or 5,393) of municipalities that answered to the Survey of Basic Municipal Information (MUNIC) adopted some measure of social isolation because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 76.0% of them, sanitary barriers were installed.

In 99.7% of the municipalities, there were confirmed cases of Covid-19. Only 18 municipalities had no cases, all with less than 10,000 inhabitants. In 93.8% of the municipalities with cases, there were hospitalizations, and in 88.8% of them there were deaths.

In the 5,109 municipalities where hospitalizations due to Covid were necessary, 23.6% reported that the number of patients exceeded the capacity of available beds and  of public, private and SUS associated ICUs. About 58.2% of these municipalities increased the number of beds, 12.3% installed field hospitals and 91.6% transfered patients to other municipalities.

In 2020, there were 6,416,845 civil servants in the direct and indirect administration of the country's municipalities, 1.8% less than in 2019. About 62.2% of the municipal civil servants in direct and 44.8% in indirect administration were statutory.

About 64.0% of the municipalities that responded to the survey had some body or structure for public housing policy and 37.6% had a Municipal Housing Plan. The existence of illegal settlement was reported by 67.9% of the interviewed city halls.

Regarding transportation policy, 49.4% of the municipalities had buses for internal travel – either by municipal or intercity buses used for this purpose. Only 20.7% of the municipalities with municipal buses had a fully adapted bus fleet.

There were family farming policies in 87.2% of the municipalities and initiatives to foster organic agriculture in 42.2% of them.

>In 2020, 94.7% of the municipalities had an organizational structure in the environmental area, a growth of 31% since 2004.

About 66.2% of the municipalities reported the occurrence of some environmental impact in the previous 24 months. The most frequent events were fires (49.4% of the municipalities) and extreme weather conditions, such as droughts and floods (40.9%).

Covid-19: 98.6% of city halls have adopted some measure of social isolation

A novelty in this edition of Munic was that the survey investigated whether, as of March 16, 2020, measures were taken to combat the Covid-19 pandemic and in what way. Of the municipalities that answered this research block (5,467), 98.6% adopted some measure of social isolation and only 1.4% (74) did not do so. But all municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants adopted some measure.

In 81.4% of the municipalities that adopted some measure of social isolation, decrees were issued and, in 18.6%, only advertising campaigns were carried out. In the Southeast and South regions and in municipalities with up to 5,000 inhabitants, the proportion of those who educated the population was above 20%. And Amapá was the only state in which all the municipalities decreed social isolation through a legal provision.

Among the municipalities that adopted social isolation, 52.0% used some monitoring system to assess the effectiveness of the measure, with the highest proportions being those with more than 500 thousand inhabitants (81.3%) and in the Central-West region (59.6%).

76.0% of the municipalities installed sanitary barriers on their access roads, a rate that reached 83.6% in those with a population between 10 thousand and 20 thousand inhabitants. Regionally, Northeast (92.6%) and North (89.0%) had the highest proportions.

The mandatory use of masks was adopted by 94.5% of the municipalities and more than 78% of them carried out actions to disinfect neighborhoods and public places, in addition to testing the population for Covid-19. Only 0.1% (3) of the municipalities reported having taken no action.

In addition, 99.1% of city halls carried out at least one of the actions investigated for the population in social vulnerability. The most cited ones were the distribution of masks (72.6%) and staple food baskets or food credit (66.3%), as well as the feasibility of maintaining the functioning of CRAS and CREAS (64.0%).

Eighteen municipalities had no confirmed Covid-19 cases in 2020

In 99.7% (5,449) of the municipalities there were cases of Covid-19 that were clinically or laboratory confirmed. And 93.8% (5,109) reported cases requiring hospitalization, reaching 100% in those with more than 500 thousand inhabitants. Only 18 municipalities reported not having a confirmed case, all with less than 10,000 inhabitants.

In 56.2% of the municipalities with confirmed cases, screening tents were installed to fight the virus. The more populous, the greater the proportion of those who set up this structure, reaching 77.1% of those with more than 500 thousand inhabitants.

In 23.6% of the municipalities where there were hospitalizations for Covid, the number of patients exceeded the capacity of beds and public or private ICUs associated with the SUS. In 58.2% of the municipalities with hospitalizations, there was an increase in the number of beds and 12.3% installed field hospitals. In 91.6% of the municipalities with hospitalizations it was necessary to transfer patients to other municipalities and in 39.1% it was necessary to keep people for more than 24 hours in outpatient units.

The North region had the highest index of municipalities where the number of hospitalizations exceeded the capacity of beds (41.5%) and where it was necessary to keep people for more than 24 hours in outpatient units (52.5%).

Human resources: number of municipal civil servants drops 1.8% compared to 2019

In 2020, direct and indirect municipal administration employed 6,416,845 persons, 1.8% less than in 2019. The proportion of municipal sevants in direct administration represented 95.5% of the total, while indirect administration accounted for 4.5%, a proportion close to that of 2019, when 5.3% of the employed persons were in indirect administration.

Among municipal employees in direct administration, 62.2% were statutory in 2020, a small drop compared to 2019 (62.5%). The participation of personnel without a permanent contract (assigned by other public bodies, self-employed service providers, volunteers, among others) rose from 18.8% in 2019 to 19.1% in 2020. Only commissioned personnel (who do not hold a permanent position ) represented 8.9% and CLT employees (servers governed by the Consolidation of Brazilian Labor Laws – CLT), 7.5%, in 2020.

Housing: 64.0% of the municipalities had an agency or structure responsible for the sector

In 2020, 3,496 municipalities, or 64.0% of those who answered the survey, had some body or structure responsible for housing policy and 37.6% had a Municipal Housing Plan. This proportion reached 91.7% among municipalities with more than 500 thousand inhabitants. In addition, 3,018 municipalities (55.3%) had a Municipal Housing Council, but only 22.7% of them had held at least one meeting in the previous 12 months.

The proportion of municipalities that held a Municipal Housing Conference in the four years prior to the survey was 7.2%. In 44.4% there was a Municipal Housing Fund.

67.9% of the municipalities had irregular and/or clandestine subdivisions

In 3,709 municipalities (67.9% of respondents), city halls reported the existence of irregular and/or illegal subdivisions; in 1,049 (19.2%), from slums, hovels, stilts or the like; in 865 (15.8%), from tenements; and in 859 (15.7%), the occupation of land or buildings by homeless organizations.

Among the actions related to housing carried out by city halls between 2018 and 2019, the most commonly found was the granting of social rent, present in 56.3% of the municipalities that took part in the survey, followed by land regularization actions (31.2% ), improvements to housing units (25.8%), construction of housing units (25.7%), supply of construction material (22.5%), supply of lands (13.4%), urbanization of settlements ( 8.0%) and acquisition of housing units (6.2%).

Transportation: 8.7% of the municipalities had a Municipal Plan

Only 477 municipalities (8.7% of those who responded to the survey) reported having a Municipal Transportation Plan in 2020, above the figure for 2017 (388, or 7.0%). The Municipal Transportation Council was present in 10.1% of the municipalities, and in only 6.4%, at least one meeting was held in the 12 months prior to the survey.

In 2020, 1,727 (31.6%) municipalities reported the existence of public transportation by intra-municipal buses, while in 2017 there were 1,679 (30.1%). The number of municipalities with buses for internal travels – intra-municipal or intercity – was 2,703 (49.4%).

In 50.7% of the municipalities with intra-municipal public transportation by bus, regulation was carried out by public concessions; in 14.9%, by permits and in 15.8%, by authorization. In 15.1% of them the service was provided by the city hall and in 19.4% there were buses under no regulation.

20.7% of the municipalities had an adapted fleet

Most municipalities did not meet the accessibility requirements for people with disabilities or reduced mobility in relation to public transportation. In 2020, 20.7% of municipalities with intra-municipal bus transportation had a fully adapted bus fleet, while 52.5% had it partially adapted and 26.8% reported that their fleets had no adaptations. In 2017, 11.7% of the municipalities had a fully adapted fleet and 48.8% had it partially adapted.

In 2020, 1,163 municipalities (21.3%) reported the existence of at least one bike lane in the municipality, representing an increase compared to 2017 (817 municipalities, or 14.7%).

Agriculture: most municipalities facilitated producer access to inputs

In 72.3% of the Brazilian municipalities that answered the survey, there was at least one program or action to facilitate the access of agricultural producers to inputs. This proportion, in 2017, was 66.6%. In 2020, North, Northeast and South had rates above the national percentage value. Among the types of inputs, seedlings stood out, present in 73.6% of the respondent Brazilian municipalities, and seeds, in 64.5%.

As for the mechanization of agriculture, the share of municipalities with programs or actions to make machinery available to agricultural producers reached 87.5%, a value above the 84.8% found in the last survey on the topic, in 2017. About 55.6% of the municipalities used the temporary free lease as a means of making machinery available.

52.5% of the municipalities had programs to fight climate problems

About 90.1% of the municipalities that responded to the survey had at least one program or action directly related to small producers, especially in the South (94.2%), North (93.9%) and Northeast (93.0 %). Policies to support family farming was the one with the highest occurrence: it was present in 87.2% of the municipalities. The actions to foster organic agriculture were developed in 42.2% of them.

In 2020, the percentage of municipalities with a program or action to prevent climate problems was 52.5%, increasing compared to 2017 (46.4%).

35.6% of the municipalities had a herd vaccination program

In 2020, 35.6% of the responding municipalities had a program or action for herd vaccination. In 2017, the first time the information was collected, the proportion was 31.1%. Just over half of the municipalities (55.6%) claimed to have a Municipal Inspection Service for quality control of products of animal origin and the proportions were higher in the South (80.9%), North (65.4%) and Central-West (53.6%). Municipal slaughterhouses were present in 19.0% of the respondents, especially in the Northeast (37.6%).

About 9.4% of the municipalities stated that they encourage wild-crop harvesting, a typical activity of small rural producers. Regional highlights were North (16.7%) and South (11.3%).

Environment: 94.7% of city halls had an organizational structure in the sector

Since 2002, Munic has been investigating the existence of an organizational structure for the environment in municipalities. Between 2004 and 2020, there was a growth of 31% in the number of municipalities that had this structure. In 2020, 94.7% of city halls already had it, with the predominance of municipal secretariats joined with other policies, which accounted for 51.9% of the total of those with some structure.

In 2020, 80% of the municipalities stated that they had Municipal Environmental Councils. In 2002, only 34.1% of the municipalities had the same entity of social participation on the subject. Most municipalities had councils with deliberative (81.3%) and advisory (77.7%) attributions. Only 37.2% had normative attributions and 36.8%, supervisory attributions. In addition, 59.9% of the municipalities had a Municipal Environmental Fund. In 2002, this percentage did not reach 2% of the total.

66.2% of the municipalities had some environmental impact event

In 2020, 66.2% of municipalities reported that they had an environmental impact in the 24 months prior to the survey. In the North region, which has the largest territorial extension in Brazil, the percentage reached 78.5% and, in the Central-West, 69.2%. The most frequent events were fires (49.4% of the municipalities) and droughts and floods (40.9%).

Only 22.5% of the municipalities had a contingency or drought prevention plan

In 2020, 53.4% ​​(2,916) of the municipalities reported having been hit by droughts in the last four years; in 2017, it had been 48.6% (2,706). Even so, only 22.5% (1,230) of the total municipalities reported having a contingency and/or drought prevention plan. Of the 2,916 affected by droughts in 2020, only 867 (29.7%) had a plan.

In 35.8% (1958) of the municipalities, there were floods in the last four years and 32.8% (1,792) of the municipalities were affected by floods or gradual flooding, a proportion higher than in 2017 (27.2%). In 17.1% (935) of the municipalities there were soil mass movements in the last four years, a proportion greater than that of 2017 (15.0%).