DPA, Madrid
© Ellan Lustosa / DPA / TNS Disinfection work in a favela in Brazil during the coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization (OMS) said on Friday that Latin America "has become a new epicenter" of the coronavirus, with Brazil as the most affected country in the area, with more than 300,000 cases and 20,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
"We have seen many South American countries with an increasing number of cases and clearly there is a concern in many of them, but certainly the most affected at the moment is Brazil," said WHO Director of Health Emergencies, Mike Ryan.
He also noted that the agency "takes note" of the decision of the Brazilian government to use hydroxychloroquine, a drug used so far to combat malaria, to treat minor cases of the pandemic.
The establishment on Wednesday of this protocol represents a victory for the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, before the detractors within his own government to use a medicine whose efficacy has not yet been proven. Two health ministers have resigned in less than a month due to their discrepancies with the president regarding health management against the coronavirus.
"We note that clinical reviews conducted by Pan American organizations and clinical trials do not support the widespread use of hydroxychloriquine to treat COVID-19 until the trials have been completed and there are clear results," said Ryan.
Brazil has confirmed this Friday a record figure of 1,188 deaths in a single day, so the number of deaths has risen to 20,047 since the start of the pandemic, with 310,087 people infected to date.
With a contagion curve that continues to increase rapidly, Brazil, with 210 million inhabitants, is already the third country with the highest number of infected in the world, only preceded by the United States and Russia.
According to WHO data, America has so far registered more than 2.2 million cases of coronaviruses, of which about 645,000 correspond to Latin America and the Caribbean, while the rest have been detected in North America.
In Latin America, Peru ranks second, behind Brazil, with more than 108,000 cases of coronavirus, while Chile, with more than 61,000 cases, and Ecuador, with 35,000 cases and close to 3,000 deaths confirmed by the authorities, follow.
The WHO claimed in March that the epicenter of the virus had ceased to be China, where the first cases arose, to move to Europe. To date, more than 5.1 million cases and nearly 336,000 deaths have been confirmed worldwide, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
News taken from: 
