RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazil registered over 70,000 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, a daily record, as a second wave of infections slams the South American country.
The new numbers reported by the Health Ministry took Brazil’s total cases to more than 7 million.
Brazil has the second-deadliest COVID-19 outbreak behind only the United States, with over 180,000 deaths from the highly contagious respiratory virus.
Wednesday’s record came without even the daily numbers from Sao Paulo state, the nation’s most populous, which has been the epicenter of the outbreak.
In a statement, the Sao Paulo state government said it had been unable to upload the data because of technical issues.
Wednesday was also the first time in three months that Brazil registered more than 900 deaths on consecutive days.
(Reporting by Pedro Fonseca; Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Gram Slattery; Editing by Peter Cooney)
