President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull
Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin
American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel
Coronavirus throughout the region.
A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county's death toll past that of
Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.
Latin America's most populous nations, Brazil and
Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.