More from Sam Cowie reporting from São Paulo –

Brazil has passed yet another grim pandemic milestone with the total number of Covid-19 cases passing 2 million, 45,403 in the last 24 hours, with 76,688 deaths, 1,322 in the last 24 hours, according to latest data from the country’s National Council of Health Secretaries.

South America’s most populous nation continues to be the worst hit in the region in terms of total cases and deaths and the second worst in the world after the United States.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right populist president, who has repeatedly sought to downplay the pandemic and its dangers, describing it as a “little flu”, repeatedly meeting with crowds of supporters and refusing to wear face masks, tested positive for Covid-19 for the second time Wednesday.

In a live video transmitted over social media yesterday, the president once again mentioned that he was treating the disease using the drug Hydroxychloroquine.

“The future will say whether this remedy is effective or not,” the president said, despite numerous scientific studies attesting that it’s not effective in treating Covid-19 and can even be dangerous.

Bolsonaro said he intended to take a third test in the next days and said he hoped “God willing, everything to be right for us to get back to work soon.”

The president’s cavalier attitude towards the disease has been widely decried for exacerbating the pandemic by experts across Brazil’s political spectrum, as well as by international observers.

One health minister was sacked in mid-April and another forced out less than a month later over disagreements with the firebrand president while a general with no previous medical experience has held the post since.

“2 million confirmed cases! 60 days without a health minister! 60 days of military occupation in the health ministry!” Tweeted Alexandre Padilha, a doctor and congressman with the leftist Worker’s Party.

While the number of new cases recorded has stablisied or fallen in city metropolises São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, they have risen elsewhere, especially in the country’s southern and Midwestern states.