Brazil passed the bleak milestone of one million coronavirus cases on Friday, as the number of infections and deaths continues to surge in Latin America’s largest country.
The health ministry said it had recorded a one-day record of 54,771 new infections — largely due to “instability” in its reporting system during the week, which meant some states were reporting figures from multiple days at once.
Bringing the total number of infections in Brazil to 1,032,913, with 48,954 deaths — second only to the United States worldwide.
On June 10, President Jair Bolsonaro’s government had stopped publishing the total number of deaths from the COVID-19 and said it was adopting a new methodology and would only report the number of deaths recorded in the past 24 hours in its daily bulletin.
That drew accusations of foul play from a long list of high-profile critics, as well as a ruling from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday that the government must return to the old format.
Earlier, Bolsonaro had threatened to withdraw his country from the World Health Organization (WHO) and accused the body of being “partisan” and “political”.
The United States have been steadily rising, with over 2.2 million people infected and at least 118,396 people dead.
Globally, over 85 lakh people (8,641,521) have been infected with the virus that has killed at least 459,474.
While the World Health Organisation has warned that the pandemic is “accelerating”, it expressed optimism that vaccines could be available before the end of this year.