Brazil became, on Saturday August 8, the second country to exceed 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, after the United States, a massacre in which President Jair Bolsonaro said he had a "clear conscience" despite criticism.

The largest country in Latin America, populated by 212 million inhabitants, also crossed another symbolic threshold on Saturday, that of 3 million people infected.

The official figures - 100,477 dead and 3,012,412 confirmed cases of contamination - must however be put into perspective due to insufficient tests, specialists estimating that the total number of infected people could be up to six times higher.

Brazil deplores 478 deaths per million inhabitants, a figure equivalent to that of the United States (487), but lower than that of Spain (609) or Italy (583).

More than 1,000 daily deaths have been recorded on average for several weeks, as the pandemic enters its sixth month in the country. The first confirmed case of Covid-19 was identified in Sao Paulo on February 26, and the first death on March 12, also in the megalopolis.

The 50,000 death mark was passed a hundred days later, but that total then doubled in half the time.

Release of balloons in Copacabana Square in tribute to the victims

The rate of contamination has accelerated in recent weeks in the countryside, in the interior, and in regions where the virus arrived later, particularly in the South and Center-West.

On the other hand, it is stable in the south-eastern states such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the most affected in absolute numbers, and declining in the northern regions, where the situation was catastrophic in April and May.

On Copacabana beach in Rio, the NGO Rio de Paz organized a release of 1,000 red balloons on Saturday morning in tribute to people who died of Covid-19 in Brazil, with 100 black crosses planted in the sand.

Former left-wing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) on Saturday denounced on Twitter "the arrogance of a president who has chosen to qualify this cruel virus as a small flu, defying science and even death , and who will bear in his soul the responsibility for thousands of lives lost ".

The pandemic has cast a harsh light on Brazil's inequalities, with the virus wreaking havoc in the favelas, particularly affecting black populations. He did not spare the natives of the Amazon, including a great cacique, Aritana Yawalapiti, died of the coronavirus this week. 

Jair Bolsonaro's "clear conscience"

"Chronicle of 100,000 deaths announced", could one read Saturday in an editorial of the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

The government managed the pandemic in a chaotic fashion, with the departure of two ministers of health in the midst of a health crisis. The portfolio has not been held for almost four months, President Bolsonaro having appointed an interim general, Eduardo Pazuello.

"We do not wage war with doctors, just as we cannot deal with Health with the military," denounced Luiz Henrique Mandetta, Minister of Health sacked in mid-April after defending the importance of confinement, rejected by the head of state. "100,000 families have not had the slightest word of comfort from the government," he added, in an interview published on Saturday in the daily O Globo.

But Jair Bolsonaro, himself infected with the virus last month, assured Thursday that he had "a clear conscience" and had done "everything possible to save lives". The far-right leader has also called "dictators" the governors of states that have taken containment measures which he has always opposed, in the name of preserving the economy.

With AFP

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