Workers in Brazil’s largest city are digging mass graves as the country battles its coronavirus outbreak, grim video shows.
Footage shows back-to-back burial plots dug in a São Paulo cemetery, the same day the country tallied its highest daily jump in coronavirus deaths at 1,179. It is now the third-hardest-hit country in the world.
“We’re losing the battle against the virus, that’s the reality,” Dimas Covas, director of the city’s COVID-19 emergency center, told Reuters. “The virus at this moment is winning the war. These days coming up, the holidays, I don’t see them as holidays, but I see them as battle days. The most important days in the fight against the virus.”
A total of 65,995 coronavirus cases and 5,147 deaths have been reported in São Paulo alone, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics.
In Brazil overall, 271,628 cases have been reported — making it third worst behind the US and Russia. Nearly 18,000 deaths have been reported in Brazil.
Meanwhile, President Jair Bolsonaro, who opposes coronavirus lockdown measures meant to keep populations apart, has promoted the use of the anti-malarial drug chloroquine to treat the coronavirus.
“The government is not exercising the role of a political leader that unites Brazil in this fight,” said Brazilian Sen. Humberto Costa, who served as health minister during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency. “The ministry of health is neither articulating nor coordinating its work with states and municipalities. The government is sabotaging the social distancing policy and is even selling the idea of a miracle drug to solve this problem, which doesn’t match the reality.”
With Post wires
