South America has become "a new epicentre" of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization said Friday, following a surge in the number of COVID-19 infections. "In a sense, South America has become a new epicentre for the disease.
We have seen many South American countries with increasing numbers of cases," WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan told a virtual news conference. "Clearly there is a concern across many of those countries, but clearly the most affected is Brazil at this point." The novel coronavirus death toll in Brazil surpassed 20,000 on Thursday, after a record number of fatalities in a 24-hour period, the health ministry said.