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Brazil and Mexico have recorded their highest single-day coronavirus death tolls to date, raising fears that the pandemic is on the rise in Latin America amid ambivalent and delayed reactions from the governments of its two largest countries. towns.
In Brazil, where the president, Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed the virus as “a little flu”, the Ministry of Health reported a grim new record of 881 deaths in 24 hours on Tuesday night. It has now confirmed 12,461 deaths, the sixth highest death toll in the world and 178,214 cases.
Mexico also reached a new milestone on Tuesday night, reporting 353 new deaths in the past 24 hours and 1,997 new confirmed cases.
A relatively low number of 108 deaths were recorded on Monday, raising hopes that the country would contain the spread because the daily figure had decreased since last week. But Tuesday’s numbers renewed concerns about his response and raised the number of confirmed cases to 38,324 with 3,926 deaths in total.
Bolsonaro, who has ignored the rising death toll from the pandemic, did not comment on the new numbers that nurses showed in Brasilia on Tuesday night for International Nurses Day.
On their backs, printed in black, were the names of 109 colleagues who have so far been killed by Covid-19. He did, however, cheep their congratulations to the nurses “fighting on the front line”.
Although Brazil is the most affected country in Latin America, and has the seventh highest number of cases in the world, movement restrictions have been imposed in just a handful of cities in a country of 211 million people.
While most of the country’s 27 governors have criticized Bolsonaro’s stance, none have imposed mandatory state-wide blocking measures recommended by experts. Instead, they have applied selective blockades in the cities or left mayors to make those decisions.
Alexandre Telles, president of the state doctors’ union, Sinmed, accused the president of “totally irresponsible” behavior over the pandemic.
“It is a posture that does not respect life and the Brazilian population,” he said. “I don’t see the disease curve going down without us applying social distancing measures.”
Telles, who works at the overloaded Ronaldo Gazolla hospital in Rio, which specializes in Covid-19 cases, said there were 1,300 patients in the city waiting for hospital beds, many in overcrowded health centers. However, people are increasingly disobeying the patterns of social distancing, either because they have to work or because Bolsonaro has told them to do so.
“The Rio health system was not prepared for this pandemic, despite the warning signs,” said Telles. “We have had days without basic medications to sedate patients.”
On Wednesday, a Brazilian supreme court judge ordered the release of Bolsonaro’s own coronavirus tests. The negative result supported the president’s previous claim for a clean health statement, but doubts persisted after it was revealed that all three tests were also conducted nearly two months ago, since then Bolsonaro has repeatedly mocked social distancing advice and it has mixed with multitudes of sympathizers and ordinary Brazilians.
Mexico also faces an increasing death toll, and questions its response to the pandemic as the government pushes to reopen the economy.
Investigations by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and El País have suggested that the Andrés Manuel López Obrador government is severely underestimating both cases and deaths.
But Mexico has been under pressure from US officials to open businesses, especially auto plants and export factories along its northern border.
On Wednesday, the Mexican president claimed victory, saying: “The safe distancing campaign has brought us control, a flattening of the curve” when his government unveiled plans to relaunch its declining economy.
Construction, mining and automobile manufacturing will be declared “essential” activities and will resume operations on May 18. On the same day, schools and businesses in areas with low numbers of Covid-19 cases, called “municipalities of hope,” will do so. start reopening with the rest of the country projected to reopen on June 1.
“Let’s move towards this new mortality,” said Jorge Alcocer, the health secretary, before correcting himself: “New normality.”
The reopening comes amid lingering fears that its public health response, which has relied on a disease model rather than widespread testing, has failed to grasp the extent of the crisis.
“They will not recognize that they have deficiencies in their counting and the capture system [for health information] it’s lacking, ”said Xavier Tello, a physician and health care consultant.
Analysts say Mexico’s Covid-19 statistics should be read nuanced, as there is a lag in the reporting of health information: the number of nightly deaths does not necessarily reflect the number of deaths from the previous day.
An analysis in Nexos magazine also warned that simply reading Covid-19’s nightly issues makes it difficult to know if the curve is flattening out.
But Dr. Alejandro Macías, former commissioner of flu from Mexico, tweeted on Tuesday after the record death toll was announced: “It is the highest number yet and shows that we are still on the rise … We probably have not seen the worst.” The United States, a country with three times the population, has already registered 20 times more deaths. “
The Chilean government announced plans for a mandatory quarantine for the 6.5 million inhabitants of its capital Santiago, the strictest measures for the country that until now had used localized blockades.
The move came after new figures revealed on Wednesday that Chile had registered 2,660 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, an increase of 60% from the previous day’s figure.
Associated Press contributed to this article.
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