Brazil’s number of confirmed cases of coronavirus passed Germany’s on Tuesday, as President Jair Bolsonaro fought states over his calls to reopen gyms and beauty salons, even as his country becomes a new global hotspot for the pandemic.
HuffPost Brazil reports (in Portuguese) that Brazil recorded its deadliest day on Tuesday, with 881 confirmed deaths in 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 12,400. Brazil now has 177,589 confirmed cases.
Bolsonaro has continually played down the risks of coronavirus despite the outbreak accelerating in Brazil, and called on states to relax their lockdown orders. The president clashed with governors again this week after declaring gyms and hair salons as “essential” services that are exempt from lockdown.
“Bolsonaro is walking toward the precipice and wants to take all of us with him,” Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzel said.
The president’s popularity has suffered since the crisis began, polls show. Disapproval of Bolsonaro rose to more than 55% in a survey released on Tuesday, up from 47% in January.
— James Martin
LA Stay-At-Home Orders Likely To Extend Through July ― 5/12/20, 3:21 p.m. ET
Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will be extended through July “with all certainty,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday.
Ferrer said at a Board of Supervisors meeting that the orders would continue for the next three months unless there was a “dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
However, Ferrer also said that the agency was hoping to “slowly lift restrictions” if new data allows it.
“Our hope is that by using the data, we’d be able to slowly lift restrictions over the next three months,” she said.
Los Angeles County is the most populated county in California. There are 32,263 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,570 related deaths in Los Angeles alone.
— Carla H. Russo
For more on the pandemic, go here.
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