Brazil Passes Grime Milestone of 100,000 Deaths

Australian State Reports Deadliest Day of Outbreak

Date: 09 August 2020 - 21:59

News ID: ۸۱۵۴۶

SYDNEY (Dispatches) -- Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, reported its deadliest day of the COVID-19 outbreak on Sunday, with 17 people dying, as police thwarted a planned anti-mask rally in the capital of Melbourne.
Victoria, at the center of a second wave of infections in Australia, reported 394 cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, compared with a daily average of 400-500 over the past week. The new deaths bring the state’s total to 210.
The southeastern state, with infections concentrated in Melbourne, accounts for a lion’s share of the national tally of more than 21,000 and 295 deaths.
In an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus, Victoria has imposed a night curfew, tightened restrictions on people’s daily movements and ordered large parts of the economy to close.
The state reported 174 such "mystery” cases in the past 24 hours, up from 130 on Saturday and bringing the total to 2,758.
Earlier in the day, Victorian police thwarted a planned anti-mask rally dubbed "Freedom Day Celebration” in Melbourne, arresting seven people and issuing 27 fines.
Neighboring New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, recorded 10 infections on Sunday, with authorities ordering students at two state schools to self-isolate after reporting COVID-19 cases.
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.
President Jair Bolsonaro — who himself reported being infected — has been a consistent skeptic 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.
On the day that Brazil reached more than 100,000 deaths, the federal government’s communication secretariat confronted criticism from former Justice Minister Sergio Moro on social media for the management of the pandemic.
"There are many numbers that deserve to be disclosed: - ALMOST 3 MILLION LIVES SAVED OR IN RECOVERY - ONE OF THE LOWEST DEATHS PER MILLION AMONG LARGE NATIONS,” said the secretariat’s official account on Twitter, sharing Moro′s tweet. Bolsonaro answered the tweet with an emoji of shaking hands.