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Hard-hit Brazil becomes second country to surpass one million COVID-19 cases

Hard-hit Brazil becomes second country to surpass one million COVID-19 cases

Coronavirus in Brazil

Brazil has passed the bleak milestone to become the second country in the world to confirm more than one million cases of Covid-19, as the disease continues to spread.

The health ministry also posted a record number of new cases in the past 24 hours, more than 54,000.

That brought the total number of infections in Brazil to 1,032,913, with 48,954 deaths, second only to the United States worldwide.

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In addition, there were more than 1,200 deaths for the fourth consecutive day, taking the total to nearly 49,000.

A lack of testing suggests the true figures are higher and experts say the outbreak is weeks away from its peak.

Since the start of June, it has registered the most new infections and deaths of any country in the world, more than 518,000 and 19,000, respectively.

It has recorded daily death tolls of more than 1,000 on each of the past four days.

Brazil has struggled to set a strategy for dealing with the pandemic.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who has famously compared the virus to a "little flu," has clashed with state and local authorities over their use of stay-at-home measures and business closuresto contain it.

The far-right leader argues the economic impact of such measures risks being worse than the virus itself, and has instead pushed his health ministry to recommend chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments, despite uncertainty about the anti-malaria drugs' effectiveness against COVID-19.

Bolsonaro threatened this month to quit the World Health Organization, accusing it of "ideological bias" against the drugs, and has ditched two health ministers since the start of the pandemic after clashing over policy differences.