Venezuela has registered a record number of new cases of coronavirus in one day – nearly 1,800, AFP reported. At a time when the country has been hit by a second epidemic since the beginning of last month, President Nicolas Maduro announced 1,796 confirmed infections in 24 hours.
Nearly 9,500 new cases have been identified in the past week. In Venezuela, with a population of about 30 million people, more than 164,000 people have been infected since the pandemic began. 1662 people died.
The opposition and NGOs say the figures are underestimated.
The Venezuelan socialist president explained the increase in new cases with the spread in the country of the more contagious variant of the coronavirus, first identified in neighboring Brazil. He even called it the “Bolsonaro variant” after his far-right Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, whom he regularly criticized for failing to respond well to the epidemic.
Catholic Venezuela welcomed Easter with tight anti-epidemic measures, without traditional processions and with a ban on mass gatherings. The vaccination campaign against KOVID-19 in the country began with Russian and Chinese vaccines. So far, Venezuela has received 250,000 doses of the Russian drug Sputnik V at an agreed 10 million doses, AFP notes.
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