RIO DE JANEIRO | Brazil passed the 90,000 coronavirus death milestone on Wednesday after recording 1,595 new deaths in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.
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Brazil, the second country where COVID-19 kills the most in the world after the United States, deplores 90,134 deaths and recorded a very high number of new contaminations in one day on Wednesday, of 69,074, according to the ministry.
These official data, scientists say, vastly underestimate the scale of the pandemic in the largest Latin American country that performs very few tests.
The new deaths and new contaminations announced Wednesday represent a record, which must however be put into perspective.
These figures can be explained by the fact that the State of Sao Paulo, the most populous in Brazil, reported on Wednesday the statistics that it had not been able to integrate the day before for technical reasons in the national table.
The fact remains that the pandemic is still very active in Brazil, with an average of more than 1,000 deaths per day over seven rolling days since the beginning of July.
As for the number of new cases over seven rolling days, it has averaged over 30,000 since June 19 and over 40,000 since July 24.
If the current pace continues, Brazil is expected to hit the 100,000 mark by the end of next week.