50 Thousand Brazilians Demonstrate After Becoming Second Country About COVID-19 Deaths

Photo illustration (Corey Oconell / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Brazil is the second country with more than 50,000 deaths due to coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The skyrocketing number of deaths has led the public to hold demonstrations against the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who are considered indifferent to the problem.

This historic record comes days after the country confirmed that more than one million people were infected with the new coronavirus. However, experts, as reported by the BBC said, the real number is higher.

Experts argue that Brazil simply has not met the ideal number of tests. After all, expert predictions suggest Brazil has not even reached the peak of the pandemic.

Bolsonaro is of the opinion that the economic impact is far more dangerous than the virus itself. There is no national lockdown policy, while local governments take their own stand to impose restrictions.

After months of imposing restrictions, the policy has slowly been loosened up, even though the COVID-19 infection rate is still high. Sunday, June 21, the Ministry of Health announced that within 24 hours, 641 deaths were recorded.

Thus, the total number of deaths in Brazil has now reached 50,617 cases. On that day, the number of people infected with COVID-19 reached more than 17 thousand. Only the United States has fared worse with 2.2 million cases and nearly 120,000 deaths.

Angry

The skyrocketing cases have made residents furious. Thousands of opponents and supporters of Bolsonaro took to the streets to protest against his government.

Anti-government demonstrators called for Bolsonaro to be impeached. Some of his policies to stem COVID-19 are full of controversy. For one thing, Bolsonaro's policies are against the lockdown and openly disagree with the advice of his own health ministry.

Apart from the early night, public anger boiled over after Bolsonaro's former aide and colleague stumbled on a corruption case. However, his supporters say that there is a systematic effort by the Congress and the Supreme Court to thwart the power of the President.