Brazil's Covid-19 death toll tops 90,000

Rio de Janeiro, July 30 Brazil's novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak has marked grim milestones, with the death toll surpassing 90,000, the number of people testing positive going over 2.5 million, and a record number of new cases emerging in a single day (nearly 70,000).

According to the Health Ministry on Wednesday, in the previous day, tests detected 69,074 new cases of infection, taking the total caseload to 2,552,265, and 1,595 more patients died of the virus, raising the death toll to 90,134, Xinhua reported.

Another 3,684 deaths are suspected of being Covid-19 related, but have not been verified.

Brazil has the world's second-largest outbreak, after the US, in both the number of cases and number of deaths.

The state of Sao Paulo, the country's most populous area, is the epicentre of the national outbreak, with 514,197 cases of infection and 22,389 deaths, followed by Rio de Janeiro, with 161,647 cases and 13,198 deaths, and Ceara, with 169,072 cases and 7,643 deaths.

( With inputs from IANS )