South America

SAO PAULO, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Brazil reported 69,381 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the nationwide tally to 14,043,076.

The health ministry said that 3,321 more deaths were registered, raising national death toll to 378,003.

Brazil has the world's second-highest COVID-19 death toll, after the United States, and has the third-largest caseload, after the United States and India. Since March, it has reported the highest average daily death tolls worldwide.

BUENOS AIRES, April 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Schools in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires open on Monday morning after a court overruled a federal order requiring classes go on-line for two weeks amid a surge in cases that has brought hospitals to near collapse.

The Buenos Aires judge ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by non-governmental parent and some teachers’ groups in the city, demanding a decree that suspended face-to-face classes in the capital region for 15 days be immediately nullified.

SANTIAGO, April 18 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — Former conservative Senator Jaime Orpis has been bestowed with the dubious honour of becoming Chile’s first-ever politician to be handed down a jail sentence for his involvement in acts of corruption.

Orpis, of the ultra-conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party, of the current government coalition of President Sebastián Piñera, was sentenced to five years for the crime of tax fraud and 600 days for bribery, as per a lengthy ruling from the nation’s Third Oral Court.

BRASILIA, April 18 (NNN-TELESUR) — At least 125.6 million Brazilians have not eaten in appropriate quantity and quality since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest data by the Food for Justice Research Group.

Based at the Free University of Berlin, the project measured the levels of food insecurity in Brazil and found that over 59.3 percent of Brazilians currently live under these conditions.

April 18 (NNN) — The Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration of Bolivia, Benjamín Blanco, made official the Government’s intention to buy the anti-COVID-19 Soberana 02 vaccine candidate from Cuba.

Blanco, accompanied by the Deputy Minister of Health Insurance, Alejandra Hidalgo, met with the Chargé d’Affaires of the Cuban embassy, Danilo Sánchez, to finalize actions aimed at acquiring the drug in phase III of clinical studies, Bolivia reported.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More than a dozen Senate Democrats sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday complaining of a woeful environmental track record by his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, and urging him to condition any support for Amazon preservation on significant progress reducing deforestation.

SAO PAULO, Apr 16 (NNN-CMA) – Brazil yesterday reported 3,560 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, raising its pandemic death toll to 365,444.

According to the Ministry of Health, during the same period, tests detected 73,174 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total infections to 13,746,681.

The state of Sao Paulo, the most populous in Brazil, has been the most affected by the pandemic, recording 2,704,098 cases and 86,535 deaths.

(Reuters) --- Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac was 67% effective in preventing symptomatic infection in the first real-world study of the Chinese shot, the Chilean government said on Friday.

The vaccine was 85% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 80% effective in preventing deaths, the government said in a report prepared by the Chilean health ministry.

LIMA, April 14 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — Ultra-leftist candidate Pedro Castillo of the Peru Libre party and perennial conservative contender Keiko Fujimori looked poised to advance to the runoff after Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) had counted 93.479% of the votes.

Although these results are still preliminary, Castillo was visibly ahead with 19.056% of the votes, followed by Keiko Fujimori from Fuerza Popular with 13.326%.

LIMA (Reuters) -Peruvian far-left candidate Pedro Castillo is set to win the Andean country’s first-round presidential election, though he will face a run-off vote in June with an electorate fragmented after a year of political and economic crisis.