Latin America's COVID-19 death toll surpasses 1.5 million with 600,000 deaths in Brazil

Brazil on Friday surpassed 600,000 deaths from the deadly coronavirus, reveals the health ministry. The country of 213 million has also recorded more than 21.5 million cases of the deadly virus.

This comes in when Latin America's death toll from coronavirus surpassed 1.5 million. The toll is at least 1,500,350 deaths, with more than 45 million cases of the virus recorded.

Brazil is the second hardest-hit country, after the United States.After Brazil comes Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Argentina in terms of deaths.

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Margareth Dalcolmo, pulmonologist and researcher at the prestigious Fiocruz research institute, while speaking to AFP said, "The situation has improved but we cannot lower our guard."She said that the pandemic could only be considered under control once "we have 80 per cent of the population vaccinated."

As of now, 71.4 per cent of Brazilians have received at least one vaccination dose but only 45.9 per cent are fully immunised.

Brazil's vaccination program began in late January, weeks after Argentina and the US. Specialists have blamed a lack of government planning.

Things have dramatically improved from three months ago. However, before this, 2,000 Brazilians a day were dying from the deadly virus.

That death rate dropped below 1,000 at the end of July and kept shrinking until it stabilised around 500 in September.

Brazil is far from seeing "the light at the end of the tunnel, the situation remains worrying," said Domingos Alves, a researcher at the Sao Paulo University's faculty of medicine.

Globally the pandemic has now claimed more than 4.8 million lives, with more than 237 million cases of the disease reported.