World

Brazil Braces for ‘Biological Fukushima’ After 4,195 Coronavirus Deaths in One Day

TOTAL MELTDOWN

Health ministry on Tuesday reported 4,195 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours—by far a single-day record.

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Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino

Brazil’s pandemic death toll is more than 200,000 behind the United States, but the situation has become so bad that public-health experts believe that Brazil could soon have the worst death total in the world. On Tuesday, Brazil’s health ministry reported an additional 4,195 COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours—by far a single-day record—confirming the country as the new epicenter of the pandemic. “It’s a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control. It’s a biological Fukushima,” Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian doctor at Duke University, told Reuters. Brazil’s death toll is now almost 337,000, second only to the U.S., which has recorded more than 555,000 deaths.

Meanwhile, a massive new study has found that one in three people who fell severely ill with coronavirus were diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition within six months of their initial infection. The study, which was published in the Lancet Psychiatry, found that 34 percent of 236,379 patients, mostly from the U.S., experienced mental and neurological conditions after recovery.

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