Brazil overtakes Italy as country with third-highest coronavirus deaths
Source: The Guardian
Brazil overtakes Italy as country with third-highest coronavirus deaths
Brazil registers a record 1,473 deaths in day, with Mexico also registering over 1,000, as Latin American countries seek to reopen
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Fri 5 Jun 2020 00.57 BST
First published on Thu 4 Jun 2020 17.47 BST
Brazil has overtaken Italy as the country with the third-highest Covid-19 death toll after a daily record of 1,473 fatalities took its total tally to more than 34,000.
The figure was published by Brazils health ministry on Thursday night and means only the United States and the United Kingdom have registered more deaths because of the pandemic. The official number of infections rose to nearly 615,000, second only to the US.
In an online broadcast shortly before the numbers were released, Brazils president Jair Bolsonaro made almost no mention of the victims but continued to publicly attack efforts to slow the advance of coronavirus with quarantine measures and social distancing.
We cant go on like this. Nobody can take it anymore, Bolsonaro said of the shutdown efforts being implemented by state governors and mayors across Brazil. The collateral impact will be far greater than those people who unfortunately lost their lives because of these last three months here, Bolsonaro said.
The numbers which came after Mexico reported a record daily tally of more than 1,000 deaths on Wednesday reinforced fears that Latin Americas two biggest economies, and other countries in the region, were facing a bleak few months.
-snip-
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/coronavirus-brazil-record-daily-death-toll-mexico