Brazil struggles to contain COVID; deaths pass 100,000

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Brazil surpassed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from COvID-19 on Saturday night, and five months after the first reported case the country has not shown signs of crushing the disease.

The nation of 210 million people has been reporting an average of more than 1,000 daily deaths from the pandemic since late May and reported 905 for the latest 24-hour period.

The Health Ministry said there had been a total of 3,012,412 confirmed infections with the new coronavirus – death and infection tolls second only to the United States. And as in many nations, experts believe that both numbers are severe undercounts due to insufficient testing.

In a tribute to COvID-19 victims Saturday morning, the non-governmental group Rio de Paz placed crosses on the sand on the famed Copacabana beach and released 1,000 red balloons into the sky.

“It’s very sad. Those 100,000 represent various families, friends, parents, children,” said Marcio do Nascimento Silva, a 56-year-old taxi driver who lost his children in the pandemic and joined the tribute.

“We reach that mark (100,000) and many people seem to not see it, both among the government and our people. They are not just numbers but people. Death became normal,” Silva said.

President Jair Bolsonaro – who himself reported being infected – has been a consistent sceptic about the impact of the disease and an advocate of lifting restrictions on the economy that had been imposed by state governors trying to combat it. He has frequently mingled in crowds, sometimes without a mask.

“I regret all the deaths, it’s already reaching the number 100,000, but we are going to find a way out of that,” Bolsonaro said in a Thursday night Facebook transmission.

Experts have complained of a lack of national coordination under Bolsonaro and scattershot responses by city and state governments, with some reopening earlier than health experts recommended.