Brazil Registers More Than 50,000 COVID-19 Deaths

Brazil has become the second country—after the United States—to register more than 50,000 deaths from COVID-19, and the country also confirmed more than 1 million coronavirus infections, the BBC reports. In one 24-hour period over the weekend, 641 more deaths and 17,000 new infections were registered.

Most new infections are arising in the Americas. In the United States, new cases reported per day have risen 15 percent over the past two weeks. On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported the largest one-day increase in infections worldwide, with 183,020 new cases. Out of those, 54,771 were in Brazil, and 36,617 were in the United States, The New York Times reports. Of the 183,000 new cases reported globally in 24 hours, WHO notes, more than 60 percent were from North and South America.

So far, the coronavirus has killed 120,000 people in the United States, more than 50,000 in Brazil, and nearly 22,000 in Mexico.

In Brazil, political tension has exacerbated the fight against the pandemic. According to the BBC, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has largely opposed lockdowns, focusing instead on the economy.

As the pandemic accelerates, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, warned world leaders against politicizing the pandemic. In a videoconference on Monday, he noted that while it took three months for the world to see 1 million COVID-19 infections, the last 1 million cases have come in just eight days, AP reports.

According to a new model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, fatalities in Brazil will surpass those in the United States by August. The model projects that Brazil could see as many as 165,960 deaths by early August, Newsweek reports.