Brazil reported a record 1,349 coronavirus deaths in a 24-hour period Wednesday, the health ministry said, as the pandemic continued to take a grim toll on Latin America’s hardest-hit country.
The figure brought the total death toll from the new
coronavirus in Brazil to 32,548, with 584,016 confirmed infections – the
second-highest caseload worldwide, after the United States.
Brazil’s death toll, which has doubled in 17 days, is currently the fourth-highest worldwide, after the US, Britain and Italy.
Experts say under-testing in the country of 210 million people means the real numbers are probably much higher.
President Jair Bolsonaro has fiercely criticized
coronavirus isolation measures, even as the number of infections and
deaths continues to soar in Brazil.
The far-right leader has urged business leaders to wage
“war” on state governors who order stay-at-home measures, arguing they
are needlessly hurting Latin America’s biggest economy.
Bolsonaro, who famously compared the virus to a “little
flu,” appears to have pinned his hopes on the drugs chloroquine and
hydroxychloroquine to stop it.
He has gone through two health ministers since the
pandemic began, firing one and reportedly falling out with the other
over his insistence on recommending hydroxychloroquine despite a lack of
scientific consensus on its safety and effectiveness against COVID-19.
The former number two under ousted health minister Luiz
Henrique Mandetta, Joao Gabbardo, told AFP that Brazil was now facing a
complex scenario with different trajectories of infection in different
regions.
“We have several curves,” Gabbardo said, adding Brazil
could face a similar situation to Italy, “which had a large number of
deaths in the north and not in the south.”
Brazil has been hardest hit so far in the southeast —
the business and industrial corridor that includes Sao Paulo and Rio de
Janeiro — the impoverished northeast, and the north, including the
Amazon region with its vulnerable indigenous population. The impact has been felt less in the south of the country so far.
However, Gabbardo warned that if the coronavirus starts
to spread rapidly in the south, which is about to hit cold winter
temperatures and peak season for respiratory infections, “there could be
very high pressure on the health system.”
– Mexico death toll surges -Underlining the pandemic’s
new epicenter in Latin America, Mexico meanwhile reported more than
1,000 coronavirus-related deaths in a 24-hour period for the first time.
The daily death toll of 1,092 was more than double the 470 fatalities reported the day before.