SAO PAOLO (BLOOMBERG) - Brazil reached 7 million coronavirus cases as infections pick up pace just ahead of the holiday season.
The government reported a record 70,574 new cases Wednesday (Dec 16), taking the total to 7,040,608. The milestone comes less than a month after Brazil hit the 6 million mark. The Latin American nation trails only the US in number of cases and is third in the world in Covid-19 deaths, with 183,735.
"The data show we are going through an acute phase of new Covid cases, disseminated across Brazil," said Domingos Alves, a professor of medicine who's part of the Covid-19 Brasil monitoring group.