South America

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 28 (NNN-CMA) – Brazilian Vice President, Hamilton Mourao, tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, his office said in a statement.

The result was confirmed yesterday afternoon, and the vice president will remain in isolation at the official vice-presidential residence, said the statement.

Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, was infected in July and has recovered.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil has registered 307 new COVID-19 deaths, and 17,246 new cases of coronavirus, the health ministry said on Saturday, as President Jair Bolsonaro said he was not worried about delays in rolling out vaccinations in Latin America’s biggest country.

Brazil now has nearly 7.5 million confirmed cases and 190,795 deaths from the virus, ministry data showed.

MONTEVIDEO, Dec 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Three Latin American countries launched mass immunization programs on Thursday as fears grew in Europe over a variant coronavirus strain that is believed to be far more contagious than the original version.

Frontline medical staff in Mexico and Chile were among the first to receive their vaccines while Costa Rica began its own immunization program, with President Carlos Alvarado hailing what “may be the beginning of the end of this pandemic.”

SAO PAULO, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Brazil registered 762 deaths from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in the last 24 hours, raising the death toll to 189,982, the Ministry of Health said Thursday.

In its daily pandemic report, the Ministry of Health also reported 58,428 new cases of infection in the last 24 hours, for a total of 7,423,945 cases since Feb. 26, when Latin America's first case was detected in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 24 (NNN-TELAM) – Argentine President, Alberto Fernandez, compared the COVID-19 pandemic, to “walking blindly through a swamp,” given that new strains of the virus have been recently detected, raising questions about the efficacy of vaccines.

Dealing with the health crisis “is the closest thing to walking blindly through a swamp, because you don’t know where you are stepping,” said Fernandez, during the inauguration of a penitentiary hospital, in the city of Lomas de Zamora, about 20 kilometres south of the capital Buenos Aires.

SAO PAULO, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's state-run Butantan Institute on Wednesday announced that the CoronaVac vaccine developed by the private Chinese laboratory Sinovac Life Science achieved the levels of efficacy against the coronavirus required by the World Health Organization (WHO) in trials with 13,000 Brazilian volunteers.

"The data corroborate that it is the safest vaccine on the market and we achieved the superiority in efficacy required by the WHO and Brazil's Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa)," Dimas Covas, director of the institute, said at a press conference.

CARACCAS, Dec 23 (NNN-TELESUR) — Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez on Tuesday welcomed the arrival of medical supplies donated by China to support the fight against the pandemic.

After pointing out that it was the ninth shipment sent by Chinese authorities, she recalled that over 274 tons of equipment, medical inputs, and medicines have been received so far this year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned 15 people, including a pair of congressional Republicans who were strong and early supporters, a 2016 campaign official ensnared in the Russia probe and former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad.

MONTEVIDEO, Dec 22 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — The Uruguayan parliament passed a bill limiting the constitutional right of assembly and closing the borders, both temporarily as part of a package of measures to help contain a spiked of the coronavirus virus.

The bill was approved in the Lower House following a long debate and immediately after the Senate gave it half sanction.

SAO PAULO, Dec 21 (NNN-CMA) – Brazil’s health ministry, yesterday, reported 408 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll in the country to 186,764.

During the same period, another 25,445 cases were registered, bringing the national tally to 7,238,600. Brazil ranks third in the world in the number of confirmed cases, behind the United States and India.

One of those who died yesterday was 87-year-old actress, Nicette Bruno. Bruno was one of the pioneers in television soap operas in Brazil.