Brazil has registered more than 300,000 deaths in connection with Covid-19 since the pandemic started, behind the United States (U.S.) with 545,000 deaths in the same period.
The Health Ministry, which said this on Thursday, put the exact number of deaths at 300,685 people at 8 pm (2300 GMT) tally, including over 2,000 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
A day earlier, Brazil recorded 3,000 deaths in a day for the first time.
In the largest country in Latin America, more than 12.2 million coronavirus infections have been recorded so far.
Intensive care units are working at maximum capacity in most states.
The country’s populist right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, played down the coronavirus from the start, rejecting a nationwide lockdown for economic reasons.
Meanwhile, U.S. has recorded more than 30 million Coronavirus infections since the pandemic started.
Data from Johns Hopkins University updated on Thursday shows that the country has passed a new record in Coronavirus cases.
No other country has recorded so many cases, and there is likely to be a high number of infections that have not been registered, the university said.
It added that the U.S. is also the hardest-hit country worldwide, when it comes to the absolute number of deaths from COVID-19, with more than half a million recorded.
The country of some 330 million people is moving to vaccinate the public quickly: more than 46.3 million have been fully vaccinated, while more than 85.4 million have received at least one dose.
