Brazil’s coronavirus death toll overtakes Britain’s to become the world’s second highest after the US with 41,828 fatalities so far
- Brazil’s death toll has passed Britain’s making it the second highest in the world
- Despite the mounting numbers country still plans to ease quarantine restrictions
- Right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed the pandemic as a ‘little flu’
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Brazil’s coronavirus death toll has now overtaken Britain to become the second highest in the world with 41,828 deaths.
Despite the country recording 909 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 828,810 confirmed infections among a population of 212 million, plans to ease quarantine restrictions and reopen shops are still going ahead.
Experts say the true number of cases could be 10 or 15 times higher.
The Brazilian death toll surpassed the British total today making it the country with the second highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world
A new area in Nossa Senhora Aperecida cemetery in Manaus, Brazil was cleared to accomodate new graves
But the World Health Organization (WHO) said the nation’s health system was standing up to the pressure.
‘The system as such from the data we see is not overwhelmed,’ the WHO’s top emergencies expert Dr. Mike Ryan said, with few areas of Brazil using more than 80% of their hospitals’ intensive care bed capacity.
He stated Brazil clearly has hotspots in heavily-populated cities but overall its health system is coping with the world’s second worst number of infections.
At a briefing in Geneva, Dr Ryan said: ‘The data we have at the moment supports (the vision of) a system under pressure but a system still coping with the number of severe cases.
Brazil’s Health Ministry reported 25,982 new infections in the last 24 hours today and more than 1,200 deaths a day since Tuesday.
Despite the mounting toll, the country’s president Jair Bolsonaro is moving to ease quarantine restrictions and reopen businesses.
Despite the growing death toll the country is still planning to ease quarantine restrictions and reopen shops
The right-wing leader has minimized the gravity of the novel coronavirus, dismissing it ‘a little flu’ and has accused state governments of exaggerating the number of infections and deaths to undermine him.
On Thursday night, Bolsonaro encouraged his supporters to ‘find a way to get inside’ hospitals to film whether the ICU beds are occupied or not, to provide images that the police and Brazil’s intelligence agency could investigate.
Brazilian shoppers lined up for hours and crowded into malls that reopened on Thursday in the country’s two largest cities.
Shoppers continued to crowd malls on Friday, Brazil’s equivalent to Valentine’s Day.
President Jair Bolsonaro encouraged his supporters to ‘find away to get inside’ hospitals to find out whether the ICU beds were occupied or not
Inside stores in Sao Paulo and Rio, distancing rules were followed, shoppers were required to wear protective masks and temperatures were taken before people entered some malls.
A poll by brokerage XP Investimentos released on Friday showed that 52% of Brazilians now favor easing quarantine restrictions, versus 44% against, even though 61% of those surveyed believe the worst is still to come.
Last month, another poll by the brokerage found that 76% saw social distancing as the best way to avoid the spread of the virus and 57% thought quarantine measures should remain in place until the risk of infection subsided.