Brazil reports highest single-day death toll spike

Brazil on Wednesday reported its highest single-day rise in coronavirus deaths, marking a total of 12,461 deaths from COVID-19.

The spike of 881 deaths Tuesday placed Brazil as the sixth most affected country by the coronavirus outbreak in the world, and the single most affected in South America.

Brazil, with a population of 209.5 million, has reported 178,214 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 72,597 recoveries, according to the Johns Hopkins University case tracker. But experts have cautioned the true numbers could be much higher due to a lack of testing resources and a large indigenous population.

“Brazil is only testing people who end up in the hospital,” Domingo Alves, a researcher at the University of São Paulo Medical School, said to Agence France-Presse.

“It’s hard to know what’s really happening based on the available data,” he continued, “we don’t have a real policy to manage the outbreak.”