Brazil's COVID-19 epidemic getting more severe with 12m cases

While the new coronavirus epidemic has eased in many countries, in the southern hemisphere country of Brazil, the situation has intensified, reported Xinhua.

The figures released by the Brazilian Ministry of Health on the evening of March 22 local time show that there were 55,177 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Brazil in the past 24 hours, and the cumulative number of confirmed cases exceeded 12 million.

Due to the epidemic severity, many Brazilian states have announced more stringent control measures to varying degrees. From the 15th to the 30th of this month, the state of Sao Paulo, where the epidemic was the most severe, entered the emergency phase. At this stage, the epidemic prevention measures are more stringent than in the red stage. Places that are not essential for daily life continue to be closed, and in addition, gatherings of religious activities, sports events and attendance of parks and beaches are not allowed.

In terms of vaccine production and delivery for Brazil, on March 17, another 2 million doses of the vaccine against the coronavirus manufactured by the Butantan Institute in partnership with the Chinese company Sinovac were delivered to the Ministry of Health's NIP, the National Immunization Program. With the new shipment, the total vaccines made available by Butantan to the NIP reaches 25.6 million doses since the start of deliveries, on January 17.