Brazil surge keeps outbreak on the boil

Record rise in cases coincides with report of 5m jobs lost, while US deaths climb

Brazil reported a single-day record of 26,417 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, according to the Health Ministry, bringing its total tally to 438,238, second only to the United States in confirmed cases.

The Latin American country's death toll rose by 1,156 from a day earlier to 26,754 confirmed fatalities from the COVID-19 respiratory disease, according to the official figures out on Thursday.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has signed a bill that provides financial aid to pandemic-hit states and cities, but vetoed part of it, according to Thursday's Government Gazette.

The financial aid takes various forms, including 60 billion reals ($11 billion) for states and cities in direct transfers and the suspension of debt payments to the central government.

Bolsonaro's government is to make four monthly payments of the same size to regional and local governments to pay for measures to contain the pandemic and cushion its impact on their economies.

However, the president vetoed a stipulation allowing salary adjustments for public-sector officials, which effectively freezes their earnings until the end of 2021. The amended bill now goes back to Congress, which will have 30 days to consider the change.

Brazil shed 5 million jobs in the first quarter as Latin America's biggest economy felt the first effects of the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic, figures showed on Thursday.

Unemployment rose to 12.6 percent, an increase of 1.4 percent on the previous quarter, according to Brazil's statistics institute IBGE.

"An indicator that reflects the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labor market - the working population - recorded a record drop of 5.2 percent in relation to the quarter ended in January, representing the loss of 4.9 million jobs," the IBGE said in a statement.

The worst-hit sector was trade, which suffered a loss of 1.2 million jobs. The construction sector shed 885,000 jobs during the shutdown and domestic services were also badly hit, with 727,000 people thrown out of work.

Globally, there had been 5,596,550 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Friday afternoon, including 353,373 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

1.7 million infections

The United States recorded 1,297 coronavirus deaths on Thursday, bringing its total to 101,573 since the global pandemic began, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The country has also logged 1,720,613 cases of the virus, far more than any other nation, the tracker kept by the Baltimore-based university showed at 8:30 pm on Thursday.

The latest job-loss figures from the US Labor Department bring to 41 million the running total of people who have filed for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus shutdowns took hold in mid-March.

There were some encouraging signs: The overall number of those drawing jobless benefits dropped for the first time since the crisis began, from 25 million to 21 million. And first-time applications for unemployment benefits have fallen for eight straight weeks, as states gradually let stores, restaurants and other businesses reopen and the auto industry starts up factories again.

New York City is expected to enter phase one of the reopening process in early June with up to 400,000 people back to work, Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed on Thursday.

At his daily news conference, the mayor said the city is "now in a position to start opening things up step by step, phase by phase" and he expected it to enter phase one in the first or second week of June.

He estimated that a total of 200,000 to 400,000 people would be back to work in businesses of construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade and curbside pickup for certain types of stores.

Businesses are required to limit capacity to 50 percent, and implement social distancing. Workers have to cover their faces when a six-foot distance cannot be maintained, said de Blasio.

Shared surfaces in a workplace must be cleaned regularly, and employees have to undergo a temperature check and fill out a questionnaire regarding their health conditions every morning, he noted.

"We're going to constantly make sure we are holding back this disease, and we're going to make sure that we are putting the steps in place all the time to avoid it ever having a resurgence," he said.

Xinhua