Brazil on Saturday became the second country to pass the grim milestone of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths as US President Donald Trump signed executive actions extending economic help in the world’s worst-hit nation.
The move marked a presidential show of strength after Trump’s Republican party and White House team failed to agree with opposition Democrats in the US Congress on a new stimulus package aimed at stopping vulnerable Americans from falling through the cracks.
“We’ve had it and we’re going to save American jobs and provide relief to the American workers,” Trump told a news conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he was spending the weekend.
Photo: AFP
With a double-digit unemployment rate, disruption to businesses from social distancing rules and COVID-19 spreading persistently, many Americans had been relying on relief measures approved earlier by Congress, but which mostly expired last month.
Trump said his decision to circumvent Congress with executive actions would mean relief money getting “rapidly distributed.”
In reality, his measures are likely to face court challenges because Congress controls federal spending.
For Trump, lagging badly in the polls against his Democratic rival, former US vice president Joe Biden, ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election, the orders were partly about showing he is in charge.
He turned the signing ceremony in the ballroom of the golf club into an assault on his opponents and threw in several false claims about his accomplishments in office.
To cheers from club members invited to watch the event, Trump called US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy,” and denounced Biden as “far left.”
Biden called Trump’s orders “a series of half-baked measures.”
“They are just another cynical ploy designed to deflect responsibility,” Biden said, adding that Americans need a “real leader” who would work to hammer out a deal with lawmakers.
Meanwhile, just a day after Latin America and the Caribbean became the hardest-hit region in the global pandemic, Brazil reported a total of 100,477 fatalities, joining the US as the only two countries to surpass the six-digit death mark.
The Brazilian Ministry of Health reported 905 new deaths in the past 24 hours, as well as 49,970 fresh cases bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 3,012,412.
However, experts estimate that the total number of infections could be up to six times higher due to insufficient testing.
Tolls continued to rise across the world, with global fatalities having soared past 722,000. More than 162,000 of those were in the US, which was on the verge of recording 5 million cases.
India has more than 2 million infections — its caseload having doubled in three weeks — and has recorded 42,518 deaths.
In Australia, the premier of Australia’s Victoria state said that more than 2,700 active cases have no known source and remain the primary concern of health authorities.
Victoria yesterday saw a welcome drop in its new COVID-19 cases with 394, but a record 17 deaths.
On the bright side, New Zealand marked 100 days without a domestic transmission of the virus.
“Achieving 100 days without community transmission is a significant milestone. However, as we all know, we can’t afford to be complacent,” New Zealand Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said.
“We have seen overseas how quickly the virus can re-emerge and spread in places where it was previously under control, and we need to be prepared to quickly stamp out any future cases in New Zealand,” he said.
New Zealand has 23 active cases in managed isolation facilities, and 1,219 COVID-19 cases in all so far.
Additional reporting by AP and Reuters
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