Aerial view of a gravedigger walking among the graves of Covid-19 victims at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, on April 29, 2021. (Credit: MICHAEL DANTAS / AFP via Getty Images)
(CNN) -
Brazil exceeded 400,000 deaths from coronavirus.
The country's Health Ministry reported more than 3,000 new deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday, bringing the total number of deaths recorded during the pandemic to 401,186.
Brazil is the second country in the world to officially surpass that grim milestone, after the United States, which is approaching 575,000 deaths.
The death toll in Brazil rose rapidly after the Christmas and New Year holidays, when locals often travel during the summer holidays from school and company, making 2021 the most severe period for Brazil's outbreak since the new coronavirus arrived in the country in March 2020.
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"With sadness on all sides, Brazil today registers 400,000 victims of covid-19," Carlos Lula, president of the National Council of Health Secretaries, said in a statement.
“The figure reflects the pain of families who lost their parents, grandparents, children and siblings in a fast, violent and often lonely way.
It also reflects mismanagement and a lack of centralized coordination at the federal level. '
As the death toll from COVID-19 has risen in Brazil - whose far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has resisted lockdowns and oversaw an often slow and uneven vaccine launch - young people are making up a larger proportion. deaths, as older Brazilians are among the few to have gotten a vaccine.
Fiocruz, a Brazilian public health research institute, recently reported that patients between the ages of 20 and 29 had the steepest increase in COVID-19 deaths among all adults between early January and mid-April this year.
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Data for the first full epidemiological week of January compared to the second week of April showed that deaths among COVID-19 patients in that age group increased by 1,081%.
Covid-19 deaths and new cases increased in all adult age groups during the same period as the daily number of deaths in Brazil increased from roughly 1,000 per day at the beginning of the year to an average of more than 2,500 per day. During last week.
Meanwhile, Brazil's vaccination campaign is proceeding at a slow pace, with around 6% of its 210 million people fully vaccinated.
Several state capitals stopped vaccines this week due to a shortage of Coronavac, one of four vaccines approved in Brazil.
Covid-19