The number of corona deaths in Brazil has passed the 250,000 threshold. As the Ministry of Health in Brasília announced on Thursday, 1541 new infections with the corona virus were registered within 24 hours. The total number of cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic rose to 251,498.
After the USA, Brazil is the country with the second highest number of corona deaths worldwide. In the United States, the death toll of half a million was exceeded on Monday.
Exactly one year ago, on February 26, 2020, the first case of corona infection was recorded in Brazil. The patient at the time was a businessman from São Paulo who had returned from a trip to Italy.
Since then, the virus has spread rapidly in the most populous and largest Latin American country in terms of area. More than 10.3 million cases of infection have been recorded in the country since the pandemic began. In the statistics of cases of infection, Brazil ranks third worldwide behind the USA and India.
Brazil’s right-wing extremist President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the danger posed by the corona virus. In the past, he also criticized the corona restrictions imposed by the Brazilian states.
Bolsonaro is currently under strong criticism for bottlenecks in the supply of corona vaccines. So far, around six million people in the country have had their first dose of vaccine injected and 1.3 million people have had two doses of vaccine. This means that the government is lagging far behind its goal of vaccinating as many 212 million Brazilians as possible by the end of the year.
The delivery bottlenecks meant that vaccination campaigns had to be temporarily suspended in some regions and cities, including the metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador.
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