Brazil govt removes coronavirus data from its official website
Jun 07, 2020
Brasilia [Brazil], June 7 : Despite registering the second-highest coronavirus cases globally, the Brazil government on Saturday (local time) removed coronavirus data that was being documented over time.
President Jair Bolsonaro has defended the move by saying that it was necessary as there were delays and changes to official record-keeping, reported Al Jazeera.
"The cumulative data ... does not reflect the moment the country is in," Bolsonaro said on Twitter, citing a note from the ministry. "Other actions are underway to improve the reporting of cases and confirmation of diagnoses," he added.
The ministry has also stopped reporting the country's total number of coronavirus cases.
These moves come a day after the President threatened to withdraw his country from the World Health Organization (WHO), Xinhua news agency reported.
Bolsonaro said Brazil will consider leaving the WHO unless it stops being a "partisan political organization."
While the country's number of coronavirus cases continued to surge, the President Bolsonaro has played down the dangers of the pandemic, replaced medical experts in the Health Ministry with military officials and also argued against state lockdowns to fight the virus.
As per the latest Johns Hopkins data, Brazil has a total number of 6,72,846 cases and 35,930 people have succumbed to the disease so far.
