BRASILIA, June 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil on Tuesday recorded its highest daily jump in new coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, with nearly 35,000 registered in 24 hours, the health ministry said.
The country, which has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, after the United States, reported 34,918 new cases and 1,282 new deaths in the past 24 hours.
That brought Brazil’s total caseload to more than 923,000, and its death toll to 45,241.
The grim new record came as the World Health Organization’s top official for the Americas again voiced concern over the situation in Brazil.
“Brazil has 23 percent of all cases and 21 percent of all deaths in our region. And we are not seeing transmission slowing down,” Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, told a news conference.
Meanwhile in LIMA, Peru’s health ministry said that the hard-hit nation’s coronavirus death toll had reached 7,056, the third-highest in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico.
Officials said the number of confirmed cases is now beyond 237,000 in Peru, which has been under a nationwide lockdown for three months.
With a population of 33 million, Peru has the second-highest number of confirmed cases in Latin America after Brazil.
Nevertheless, Health Minister Victor Zamora told reporters that the number of new cases has begun to decrease.
Peru’s healthcare system is on the verge of collapse, with more than 10,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals.
Seventy percent of Peru’s cases have been reported in the Lima metropolitan area, home to a third of the country’s population.
The death toll includes more than 200 inmates who caught the disease in Peru’s overcrowded prisons, at least 170 police officers working to enforce curfews and border closures, and more than 50 medical personnel, according to official figures. — NNN-AGENCIES
