Brazil breaks its record and is the only country in the world with more than 3,000 daily deaths from covid-19

Workers buried a victim of covid-19 in the Viola Formosa cemetery in São Paulo, last Thursday.Fernando Bizerra Jr / EFE

The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating in Brazil and has entered its worst phase.

This Tuesday, the country surpassed the 3,000 dead mark for a single day.

Specifically, 3,251 deaths were registered in the last 24 hours, which has raised 298,676 victims since the beginning of the crisis, according to data from the Ministry of Health bulletin.

Only the United States had exceeded, in December of last year, the mark of 3,000 daily deaths.

Mexico also reached this figure, on February 5, but this was due to the fact that the day before it had not recorded any deaths.

When the United States, which has 333 million inhabitants, reached 3,177 deaths in one day, on December 9, it represented a rate of 9.6 deaths per million inhabitants, according to the platform

.

On January 12, days before the departure of Donald Trump from the White House, it added 4,477 deaths;

the rate rose to 13.53 deaths per million inhabitants.

Brazil, with about 210 million inhabitants, reached 15.5 deaths per million this Tuesday.

The deaths of the day in the State of São Paulo anticipated the new national record.

The richest entity in Brazil this Tuesday counted 1,021 deaths in 24 hours, according to the Government of João Doria (PSDB).

The previous record was a week earlier, on March 16, the day when 679 deaths were tallied.

São Paulo has the largest network of public and private hospitals and there are practically no vacancies for new patients: the occupancy rate for ICU beds exceeds 91%.

The situation is similar, or even more dramatic, in the other federal units.

Last week, governors said sedative drugs for intubating patients in ICUs were running out in at least 18 states and that more than a hundred cities were already experiencing a lack of bottled oxygen.

Brazil's figures do not place the country in an unprecedented situation in the world, as other nations have already gone through similar or even worse periods in the pandemic.

But, while the main affected by the coronavirus are betting on strict measures to restrict circulation, Brazil is going in the opposite direction.

President Jair Bolsonaro has denied the severity of the crisis from its inception, promoting agglomerations and turning against governors who are trying to tighten quarantines.

Result: Brazil is not only the second country with the highest gross number of deaths, only behind the United States, with 543,196 deaths, but it is the only country that today registers more than 1,000 deaths per day.

Among the 10 countries with the highest absolute number of deaths (the United States, Brazil, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia, France, Germany and Spain), Brazil also leads the highest proportional daily rate.

Considering the daily average between March 16 and March 22, the country has a rate of 10.85 deaths per million inhabitants every day.

It is behind seven other countries: Hungary (20.23 deaths), Czech Republic (19.09), Montenegro (16.38), Bosnia and Herzegovina (15.41), Bulgaria (14.72), Slovakia (13, 06) and North Macedonia (11.18), according to

.

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