Brazil's COVID-19 Death Count Surpasses 90,000

Brazil registered record daily numbers of infections and deaths from the new coronavirus Wednesday, sending its overall death count surging past 90,000 people.

The country, which has been hit harder than any except the United States in the pandemic, reported 69,074 new cases and 1,595 new deaths in the past 24 hours.

That brought the figures to a total of more than 2.5 million cases and 90,134 deaths since the start of the pandemic, the health ministry said.

Experts say under-testing in the country of 212 million people probably means the real numbers are much higher.

Technical issues likely contributed to the high daily figures.

The health ministry had said Tuesday that problems with its online reporting system had delayed figures from Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous state and the one with the most cases and deaths.

Still, the numbers paint a bleak picture of how the country is faring against the virus.

It has regularly recorded more than 1,000 deaths a day since early July, and more than 30,000 new cases a day since mid-June.

President Jair Bolsonaro faces criticism for his handling of the pandemic.

The far-right leader has dismissed the virus as a "little flu" and attacked lockdown measures by state and local authorities to contain it, arguing the economic fallout could be worse than the disease.

Even after contracting the virus himself earlier this month, forcing him to work from quarantine at the presidential palace for more than two weeks, Bolsonaro has continued to downplay the severity of the pandemic.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)