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Brazil currently accounts for one-quarter of the entire world’s daily COVID-19 deaths, far more than any other single nation, and health experts are warning that the nation is on the verge of even greater calamity. The nation’s seven-day average of 2,400 deaths stands to reach to 3,000 within weeks, six experts told the Associated Press. That’s nearly the worst level seen by the U.S., though Brazil has two-thirds its population. Spikes of daily deaths could soon hit 4,000; on Friday there were 3,650. (Biller and Savarese, 3/27)

Brazil is in the throes of a battle against the new Covid-19 variant from the Amazon that threatens to send shock waves across the globe. Home to less than 3% of the world’s population, Brazil currently accounts for almost a third of the daily global deaths from Covid-19, driven by the new variant. More than 300,000 have died, and daily deaths now top 3,000, a toll suffered only by the far more populous U.S. (Trevisani, Pearson and Magalhaes, 3/27)

Mexico’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is likely at least 60% higher than the confirmed number, putting it in excess of 300,000, according to government data. Updated figures here on excess mortality in a table published by Mexico's Health Ministry showed that by the end of the sixth week of this year, 294,287 fatalities "associated with COVID-19" had been registered on death certificates in Mexico. That was 61.4% higher than the confirmed death toll of 182,301 given as a comparison in the same table. (3/28)

Mexico's government has released a new report that shows nearly 120,000 victims of Covid-19 may have gone uncounted until now -- a finding which would raise the country's death toll from the virus by nearly 60%. The new Health Ministry report suggests that a total of more than 321,000 people have likely died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. (Suarez, 3/28)

A delivery of 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine from the United States landed in Mexico City on Sunday night, Mexico’s foreign ministry said, following an accord U.S. President Joe Biden made with Mexico this month. The vaccines were the initial batch in an agreement to send some 2.7 million AstraZeneca doses from the United States to help Mexico offset local shortages for its drive to inoculate its population of 126 million. (3/29)

Germany’s third wave of the coronavirus could be the worst so far and 100,000 new daily infections is not out of the question, the head of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases (RKI) said on Friday. (3/26)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blamed her country’s difficulties during the coronavirus pandemic — from the slow vaccine rollout to the back-and-forth over lockdown rules — partly on “a tendency toward perfectionism” and called for greater flexibility to tackle the latest surge in cases. (Jordans, 3/29)

India has reported on Monday its worst single-day increase in COVID-19 cases since October, taking the tally to more than 12 million for the first time ever. A total of 68,020 new coronavirus cases were reported in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said. It was the highest daily rise since Oct. 11, according to a Reuters tally. (3/29)

British Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi announced on Friday that the country will begin to disperse coronavirus vaccine booster shots to citizens who are 70 or older. The booster shots are set to begin in September of this year and will be provided to elderly British citizens in an effort to protect them from emerging coronavirus variants, according to The Telegraph. "Jonathan Van-Tam [the deputy chief medical officer] thinks that if we are going to see a requirement for a booster jab to protect the most vulnerable, [it] would be around September," Zahawi told the newspaper. (Jenkins, 3/27)

A Paris court handed hundreds of millions of euros in damages and fines to a French pharmaceutical company on Monday for its role in one of the nation’s biggest modern health scandals, finding it guilty of manslaughter and other charges for selling a diabetes drug blamed for hundreds of deaths. The ruling capped a judicial marathon targeting Servier Laboratories and involving more than 6,500 plaintiffs. The Paris tribunal took nearly three hours to read out its verdict in full, because it was so long. The huge trial was spread over 10 months in 2019 and 2020, and nearly 400 lawyers worked on the case. (Vaux-Montagny and Mori, 3/29)