The annual New Year's Eve celebrations which traditionally see millions of people gathered on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro have been cancelled this year as Brazil grapples with surging coronavirus infections, city authorities said.
Brazil is expected to pass 1.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, as the virus continues to ravage Latin America's largest country even as cities reopen bars, restaurants, and gyms sparking fears infections will keep rising.
The Rio de Janeiro state football championship restarted once again on Sunday as Botafogo - one of the clubs opposed to what they see as a premature resumption of top-level football - took the field with a banner protesting the decision.
Brazil reached more than a million confirmed coronavirus cases and 50,000 deaths over the weekend as throngs of people swarmed Rio de Janeiro beaches, but the World Health Organization said on Monday that even more cases were likely going uncounted.
Services activity in Brazil slumped 11.7% in April, figures showed on Wednesday, the biggest fall since comparable record-keeping began nearly a decade ago as social isolation measures to combat the COVID-19 outbreak slammed the economy into reverse.
Hundreds of demonstrators converged on the square in front of the Rio de Janeiro state government palace Sunday, protesting crimes committed by the police against black people in the Brazilian city’s poor neighborhoods, known as favelas.
Sea turtles have been spotted swimming amid garbage next to an airport in Brazil’s tourist hotspot of Rio de Janeiro, as the scream of jet engines that would normally keep them away has been largely silenced due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Brazil, the hardest-hit Latin American country in the coronavirus pandemic, has surpassed 11,000 deaths, according to figures released on Sunday by the Ministry of Health.
Brazil's President Jail Bolsonaro railed against the country's lockdown on Sunday in a speech to thousands of anti-confinement demonstrators as the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections passed 100,000, with more than 7,000 deaths.
Already grappling with one of Brazil’s most severe outbreaks of the novel coronavirus and a budget deep in the red, Rio de Janeiro state faces a potential threat to its solvency at the hands of investment giants PIMCO and Dodge & Cox.