Brazil in 3rd spot in cases; global tally nears 5mn
SAO PAULO: Brazil has the thirdhighest number of Covid-19 cases in the world, according to figures released by John Hopkins University on Monday, a troubling surge for a country struggling to respond to the pandemic.
The coronavirus has infected nearly 5 million people globally, claiming at least 322,000 lives.
With 254,220 confirmed cases, Brazil has now surpassed Britain, Spain and Italy in the past 72 hours on the list of total infections, and is behind only the US and Russia. Brazil has registered 16,792 Covid-19 deaths, the sixthhighest toll in the world. But experts say the real figures could be 15 times higher or more.
President Jair Bolsonaro is urging the country to get back to work to stop an economic crash. State and local authorities, however, are largely calling on citizens to stay home and practice social distancing .
The virus is spreading so fast among the indigenous people in the furthest parts of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest that doctors are now evacuating critical Covid-19 patients by plane to the only intensive care units in the vast region. “The number of Covid-19 patients has increased a lot,” said Edson Santos Rodrigues, a pediatric doctor working on medevac planes for the state of Amazonas.
Three-quarters of the 540 confirmed cases among 40 tribes are in the Amazon where the pandemic has hit Manaus so badly that it was the first Brazilian city to run out of ICU beds.
MOSCOW:RUSSIA’S Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin returned to his duties on Tuesday after recovering from the coronavirus, as total infections approached 300,000 and officials said new cases were dropping off.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree reinstating Mishustin as the head of government, nearly three weeks after the prime minister announced on television he had tested positive for coronavirus.
Mishustin checked himself into hospital and his deputy was named interim prime minister, but he continued to participate in meetings via video-link wearing a suit and tie.
The 54-year-old former tax chief was appointed prime minister in a surprise government shake-up earlier this year but had little time to make an impact before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
His reinstatement came after health officials reported 9,263 new infections in Russia over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 299,941, the second-highest in the world after the US.
Mishustin was just one of several high-ranking Russian officials to have been infected, including the ministers of culture, education and construction, as well as Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The prime minister said Monday that Russia had stopped the growth of new infections, but cautioned that the situation remained “difficult”. He credited a nationwide lockdown and “systematic work” over the past two months for slowing the rate of new infections.
The Kremlin last week eased nationwide anti-virus measures imposed in March and Mishustin said on Monday that dozens of regions throughout the country were ready to gradually lift lockdown orders. Tuesday’s tally saw new cases fall below 10,000 for the fourth day in a row, after Monday’s count saw new infections under 9,000 for the first time since the beginning of May.
A majority of infections in Russia are centralised in the capital, which has extended its lockdown until the end of May.