The department said the total number of confirmed infections has increased to 739,503 (representative)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:
The Brazilian government started to publish the total number of deaths in the country on Tuesday following the coronavirus pandemic, after being accused of trying to hide the extent of its health crisis.
The government of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro stopped publishing the total number of deaths from the new coronavirus on Friday, saying it was adopting a new methodology and would only report the number of deaths recorded in the past 24 hours in its daily bulletin.
This prompted charges of foul play from a long list of high-profile critics, as well as a ruling released on Monday by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that the government must revert to the old format.
The Department of Health did so on Tuesday, saying that the number of deaths had increased by 1,272, for a total of 38,406 people killed by the virus – the third highest number in the world, after the United States and Great Britain.
The ministry said the total number of confirmed infections had risen to 739,503, the second highest number in the world after the United States.
According to experts, the subtests mean that the real number of 212 million inhabitants is probably much higher.
The Ministry of Health did not immediately answer questions from AFP about why it reverted to the old format and its plans for the future.
Bolsonaro, who compared the virus to a “small flu”, opposed the consensus response to the pandemic, saying that keeping people at home unnecessarily destroys the economy.
He threatened to resign from the World Health Organization on Friday for “ideological bias” – criticism was picked up on Tuesday by his foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo.
“WHO lacks independence, transparency and consistency. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is following its role with great concern,” said Araujo.
“We have to think about it. Is it a question of political influence, is it a question of non-state actors who influence WHO?”
Bolsonaro’s threat to leave the WHO followed in the footsteps of President Donald Trump, whom he admires, and who withdrew the United States from the organization last month.
Trump has accused the WHO of bias in favor of China, with which its administration has argued over the origin and management of the pandemic.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
