THE GUARDIAN /UK
By Tom Phillips
In case you missed this earlier: Brazil’s 24-hour death toll has for the first time passed 2,0000, as the world’s second worst-affected country in terms of the total lives lost sees records tumble
Another 2,286 Brazilians had lost their lives in the 24 hours to Wednesday.
The latest high, which followed a record 1,972 deaths on Tuesday, took the South American country’s total death toll to more than 270,000, second only to the US.
Hours earlier Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, excoriated what he called President Jair Bolsonaro’s “moronic” and inept response to the pandemic.
“Lots of these deaths could have been avoided had we had a government which had done basic things,” Lula said, attacking how Bolsonaro had failed to buy vaccines and trivialized Covid-19 as a “little flu” about which only only “pansies” and “cowards” were concerned.
Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain, has shown scant sympathy for Brazilian victims of Covid, last week telling citizens to stop “whining” about the pandemic.
Speaking on Wednesday Lula said: “I want to express my solidarity with the victims of coronavirus, the relatives of the victims … and above all with the heroes and heroines of our public health service.”
“Had it not been for our national health service we would have lost so many more people than we have lost,” he added.