The number of people to have died from Covid-19 in Brazil has passed 150,000, the country's health ministry says.
Brazil
has the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the world, after the
US, and the third-highest number of cases after the US and India.
The country also passed five million total infections earlier this week.
President
Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of downplaying the risks of the virus
throughout the pandemic, ignoring expert advice on restrictive measures.
Brazil has by far the highest number of deaths in South America, and the state of São Paulo has been the worst hit.
According
to figures from the health ministry, 150,198 people in Brazil have died
of Covid since the first fatality was recorded in March, and 5,082,637
people have tested positive for the virus.
In Colombia, the next worst-hit country in the region, 27,495 people have died and there have been 894,300 confirmed cases.
However
the daily number of new cases in Brazil has been slowly falling since
it plateaued in the summer, when there were about 1,000 new deaths per
day for two months.
Mr Bolsonaro's handling of the pandemic - his
decision to oppose lockdown measures and prioritise the economy - has
been extremely divisive.
He has also been criticised for minimising the threat of COVID-19, including by calling it a "little flu".
However, the president has repeatedly rejected this criticism, even when he himself became ill with the virus in July.
In
August, Brazil's Vice-President Hamilton Mourão also defended the
government's approach, and instead blamed a lack of discipline among
Brazilians for the failure to limit the spread of the virus through
social distancing measures.