BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil has had 33,887 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours, and 870 deaths from COVID-19, the health ministry said on Friday.
The South American country has now registered 20,528,099 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 573,511, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest after the United States.
It was the lowest death toll for a Friday since Jan. 1. As vaccination advances in Brazil, the rolling 7-day average of COVID deaths has fallen to less than one third of the toll of almost 3,000 a day at the peak of the pandemic in April.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Chris Reese)
