Brazil Stops Publishing COVID Cases And Deaths Totals

The Associated Press reports:

Brazil’s government has stopped publishing a running total of coronavirus deaths and infections in an extraordinary move that critics call an attempt to hide the true toll of the disease in Latin America’s largest nation.

Saturday’s move came after months of criticism from experts that Brazil’s statistics are woefully deficient, and in some cases manipulated, so it may never be possible to understand the depth of the pandemic in the country.

On Friday, the federal Health Ministry took down a website that had showed daily, weekly and monthly figures on infections and deaths in Brazilian states. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tweeted Saturday that disease totals are “not representative” of the country’s current situation.