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| - Brazil passed the grim milestone of 180,000 deaths from Covid-19 Friday, as experts warned the country was undergoing a second wave of infections despite President Jair Bolsonaro's insistence the crisis was at the "tail end." The Brazilian health ministry reported 672 new deaths for a total of 180,437 since the pandemic began, making the South American country the second to pass that threshold, after the United States. Brazil, which endured a brutal plateau of more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths a day from June to August, had succeeded in bringing its average daily death toll down to about 300 last month. However, that number rose again above 800 this week, before settling back to 639 Friday. Intensive care units in many cities are meanwhile near full, and preparations for an eventual vaccination campaign have been caught up in a political battle between Bolsonaro and a likely adversary in the 2022 presidential race, Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria. Bolsonaro has been at odds with health experts over how to respond to the pandemic since the beginning. The far-right president has downplayed the new coronavirus as a "little flu," condemned the "hysteria" around it and pushed to use the drug hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19, despite a raft of studies showing it is ineffective. bur-jhb/st
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