Brasilia, Brazil — Five months after the first case was confirmed in the country, Brazil is now nearing 100,000 deaths from the virus Covid-19.
Since late May, the nation of 210 million people, have been reporting an average of over a 1,000 daily deaths due to Covid-19.
On Friday, The Health Ministry of the country said that there had been a total of 2,962,442 confirmed infections and 99,572 deaths — tolls second only to the United States.
Experts in many nations believe that the tolls of both countries are severe undercounts due to insufficient testing.
The non-governmental group, Rio de Paz carried out an event in tribute to all of the Covid-19 victims. They places crosses and a thousand red balloons on the sand of the famous Copacabana beach.
“It’s very sad. These 100,000 represent various families, friends, parents, children,” said Marcio Silver, 55, who had lost his children due to the pandemic and had later on joined the tribe.
One poster read, “100 thousand: Why are we the second country in number of deaths?” The NGO members released the balloons, which sailed into the sea, at the end of the tribute.
The President of the country, Jair Bolsonaro, who himself reported being infected, has been a consistent skeptic about the impact of the disease. He has also been an advocate of lifting the restrictions on the economy that were imposed by state governors trying to combat it. The President had frequently mingled in crowds during the pandemic, sometimes without wearing a mask.
”I regret all the deaths, it’s already reaching the number 100,000, but we are going to find a way out of that,” Bolsonaro said in a Thursday night Facebook transmission.
