LatAm still faces grim coronavirus fight amid ballooning caseload

MEXICO CITY - The COVID-19 pandemic continues ravaging Latin America, as major countries registered increasing confirmed cases and rising death tolls amid calls for more caution and strong lockdown measures.

Brazil recorded the second highest number of confirmed cases in the world after the United States, with a total of 772,416 people tested positive for the coronavirus as of 0033 GMT on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Brazilian industry registered the poorest monthly performance in a decade in April, with a 23.3 percent drop in billing compared to the previous month, the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) said on Tuesday.

April also saw a dip in the number of production hours, which fell 19.4 percent compared to March. The number of workers in the industrial sector also tumbled 2.3 percent from March.

The negative growth figures reflected the impact "of the severe and lasting reduction in demand" amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the CNI said. The economy is expected to begin to recover in June, according to CNI's executive manager Renato da Fonseca.

Mexico's COVID-19 death toll has passed the 15,000 mark, with 708 additional fatalities reported over the past 24 hours, according to the health ministry.

The national tally of coronavirus cases stood at 129,184, up by 4,883 over the past 24 hours, said Jose Luis Alomia, the director of epidemiology at the health ministry, on late Wednesday.

Argentina should reimpose strict lockdown measures given the high number of novel coronavirus infections reported daily, President Alberto Fernandez said on Wednesday.

"We have not overcome the problem yet. We must move very cautiously, because we run the risk of ... failing to realize that we are generating situations of transmission," said Fernandez.

Argentina on Tuesday reported 1,141 new cases of infection, the largest single-day rise since the outbreak was detected here on March 3.

"The speed of transmission we have today is the fastest since day one, meaning we should be in phase 1 (of the pandemic), which is a total lockdown," Fernandez told a local radio station.

The capital Buenos Aires and other hard-hit parts of the country have moved on to phase 3 of the pandemic, which allows for more relaxed measures through June 28.

Peru, with the eighth-highest number of cases in the world, has the second largest caseload in Latin America after Brazil.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Peru surpassed 200,000 on Tuesday, less than a month after the coronavirus caseload topped 100,000 in the country.

A total of 1,227,691 tests for the virus have been carried out so far, with 203,736 positive cases, the health ministry said in its latest report.

The South American country has registered 5,738 deaths from the disease, representing the third-highest death toll in Latin America and the Caribbean after Brazil and Mexico.

"Out of all the people who tested positive, to date 92,929 have completed their quarantine at home or been discharged from a health facility," the ministry said.

The country has carried out quarantine measures and a nighttime curfew to curb the spread of the pandemic.