Brazil set daily records on Wednesday for new COVID-19 cases and related fatalities, as the world’s second-worst outbreak hurtles toward the milestone of 100,000 dead amid easing lockdowns.

Brazil is the country worst hit by COVID-19 outside of the United States in both its death toll and case count. The 69,074 new confirmed cases and 1,595 additional deaths reported by the Health Ministry pushed the country past 2.5 million infections and 90,000 killed.

Last week, Brazil recorded 7,677 deaths from COVID-19, the most fatalities in any week since the pandemic began, defying repeated predictions that the outbreak had peaked.

“Brazil is experiencing the worst phase of the pandemic,” said Alexandre Naime, head of the department of infectious diseases at Sao Paulo State University.

Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous and hardest-hit state, has been working through a backlog of previously unregistered cases, reporting more than 26,000 cases on Wednesday alone.

While Sao Paulo and neighboring Rio de Janeiro were hit first by the virus, health officials have expressed rising concern over outbreaks in the center-west and far south of the country, where the arrival of winter favors contagion.

Those conditions have turned Brazil into a global testing ground for drug companies to test potential vaccines.

A Brazilian research institute on Wednesday said it had reached an agreement with China’s Sinopharm to start what would be the fourth major trial of a potential vaccine in the country.

Another 3,684 deaths are suspected of being COVID-19 related, but have not been verified.

Brazil has the world’s second-largest outbreak, after the US, in both the number of cases and number of deaths.

Earlier in the month, the President had announced that he tested positive for the COVID-19 and he thereafter went into isolation at Alvorada Palace while recovering from the disease.

Despite the rising numbers, Bolsonaro has argued that regional lockdowns were having a more damaging effect on the economy than the virus itself, and accused the media of spreading panic and paranoia.

(With inputs from agency)