Brazil’s Covid death toll tops 50,000 as Europe opens

Brazil registered its 50,000th death from Vovid on Sunday, underlining Latin America’s struggle to contain the disease.

A burial with coronavirus protocols under at the Vila Formosa cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday. Picture: AFP

Brazil has registered its 50,000th death from the coronavirus outbreak, underlining Latin America’s desperate struggle to contain the disease, as ­Europe’s gradual emergence from lockdown was marked by Spain reopening its borders.

Brazil is the second-worst affected country behind the US (with 119,000 deaths) and the spread of COVID-19 is accelerating across Latin America, with Mexico, Peru and Chile also hard-hit as death tolls soar and healthcare facilities are pushed towards collapse.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been fiercely criticised for comparing the virus to a “little flu”, argues the economic impact of shutdowns is often worse than the virus itself.

But Mexico City has delayed reopening markets, restaurants, malls, hotels and places of worship, with the country now recording over 20,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Highlighting the region’s woes, Peru passed 8000 deaths on Sunday despite preparing to reopen shopping malls on Monday.

In contrast, primary and secondary school children will return to class in France on Monday, and cinemas and theatres will also reopen. On Sunday, traffic flowed again across the Spain-France border in a watershed moment for the millions of businesses and workers across Europe who have suffered from the downturn.

Spain has been among Europe’s hardest-hit nations, but on Sunday it lifted a slew of restrictions in a bid to get its tourism industry back up and running.

As well as opening its land border with France, Spain also welcomed EU nationals, those from the passport-free Schengen zone and Britons at seaports and airports — without enforcing quarantine periods. Around 100 flights from European countries landed at Spain’s airports.

Clusters have emerged in the Palestinian territories, Morocco and Iran, where officials have now registered more than 100 deaths a day for three days running.

Beijing is also battling a new outbreak of over 200 cases.

The authorities have taken more than two million test samples and banned imports of chicken from an American producer, suspecting the virus could have been in contaminated food.

COVID-19 has now killed more than 465,000 people and infected almost nine million worldwide.

Although the spread has slowed in Europe, it remains the worst-affected continent, with more than 2.5 million cases.

On the eastern fringes of ­Europe, cases have spiked again in Azerbaijan, forcing the government to institute another lockdown.

Saudi Arabia on Sunday ended its coronavirus curfew, despite a spike in infections. It also reopened its mosques in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, after a three-month shutdown.

AFP