South America

BUENOS AIRES, April 25 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — Buenos Aires City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta ordered all health care facilities regardless of whether public or private to cancel every non-urgent surgical procedure or treatment scheduled for the coming days to make room for the increasing number of covid-19 patients who need hospitalization, it was announced.

RIO DE JANEIRO, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Brazil registered 3,076 more COVID-19-related deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing its death toll to 389,492, the country's Ministry of Health reported on Saturday.

According to the ministry, another 71,137 new cases were registered, bringing the country's caseload to 14,308,215.

Brazil is currently ranked second in the world in the number of deaths from COVID-19, surpassed only by the United States, and third in the world in the number of cases, behind the United States and India.

(Reuters) --- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Friday that if he were to order the military to take the streets and restore order, “the order will be followed,” raising fresh questions about his politicization of the armed forces.

Speaking during a TV interview, Bolsonaro said he would not "go into details into what I'm preparing." But he said that "if we were to have problems, we have a plan of how to enter the field ... our armed forces could one day go into the streets."

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.