Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been one of the world's most high-profile coronavirus skeptics since the pandemic began, often downplaying the gravity of the global health crisis. Now, his government appears to have taken that skepticism to a new level.
As of Saturday — when global coronavirus deaths passed 400,000 — Brazil has stopped publishing a running total of COVID-19 deaths and infections in what many see as an attempt to hide the virus' true toll in the country, The Associated Press reports. "We are becoming an international joke in terms of public health," said Domingo Alves, an associate professor of social medicine at the University of Sao Paulo. "Deaths cannot be hidden by decree."
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