20th June, 2020
Brazil passed the grim milestone of one million coronavirus cases Friday.
And it did in morbid style, by smashing the world record in single day confirmed cases of the virus.
It recorded 54,771 cases to soar to a cumulative 1,032,913 cases.
It also has the world second largest death toll of 48,954.
The health ministry blamed the huge infections on “instability” in its reporting system.
It said some states were reporting figures from multiple days.
Experts say under-testing means the real numbers are probably much higher.
Despite the grim figures, the infection curve in Brazil is finally showing signs of flattening.
But the country of 212 million people is one of the most worrying hotspots in the pandemic.
Since the start of June, it has registered the most new infections and deaths of any country in the world, according to an AFP count based on official figures — more than 518,000 and 19,000, respectively.
It has recorded daily death tolls of more than 1,000 on each of the past four days.
Brazil has struggled to set a strategy for dealing with the pandemic.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who has famously compared the virus to a “little flu,” has clashed with state and local authorities over their use of stay-at-home measures and business closures to contain it.
The far-right leader argues the economic impact of such measures risks being worse than the virus itself, and has instead pushed his health ministry to recommend chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments, despite uncertainty about the anti-malaria drugs’ effectiveness against COVID-19.
Bolsonaro threatened this month to quit the World Health Organization, accusing it of “ideological bias” against the drugs, and has ditched two health ministers since the start of the pandemic after clashing over policy differences.
The health minister he fired in April, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, told AFP Brazilians have suffered because of mixed messages from the government.