© REUTERS / Adriano MachadoBrazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is seen before the inauguration ceremony of a temporary field hospital, amid COVID-19 outbreak, in Aguas Lindas de Goias, Brazil
President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the region.
A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county's death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.
Latin America's most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.
Comment: So much for anti-social distancing! Similar rallies have taken place in Sydney and Melbourne:
And things have predictably turned ugly:
In Germany, protestors have turned out in Cologne and Berlin, although many are still wearing masks:
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