Brazil documents steep rise in COVID-19 cases

Brazil has documented 59,961 cases of COVID-19, a disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in the past 24 hours, with the total number of recorded cases in the country reaching 2,287,475, the Brazilian health ministry informed on Thursday.

For two days running, the daily number of COVID-19 cases has been increasing at a higher rate than in the past four weeks. On Wednesday, a record 67,860 COVID-19 cases were documented, while for the past month, the number of daily cases has oscillated between 40,000 and 50,000.

The ministry informed that 1,311 people had died from the virus in Brazil in the past 24 hours. The death toll since the start of the pandemic in the country has reached 84,082. Meanwhile, 1,570,237 patients have recovered. There are currently 633,156 active cases of COVID-19 in Brazil. There are 1,090 persons infected with COVID-19 per 100,000 Brazilian residents and 40 deaths. Those figures are currently on the rise.

The first case of COVID-19 was documented in Brazil on February 26. It currently ranks second in the world after the USA on the amount of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The Brazilian health ministry predicted earlier that the situation would stabilize by July, and in August, the infection rate would begin to decrease gradually.