Brazil Coronavirus Cases, Death Toll: A Look At How Serious It Is Getting In South America's Most Populated Country

The coronavirus outbreak continued to worsen at an alarming rate in Brazil, with close to 50,000 deaths reported in total and 1,022 on Friday alone.

Brazil's health ministry reports that the country has had over a million confirmed cases of COVID-19 to date, making it second only to the U.S.

Brazil has been gravely impacted by the global pandemic since reporting its first case on Feb. 26. The initial dismissal of the virus and subsequent poor handling of the response has drawn intense criticism of President Jair Bolsonaro. Over the course of the pandemic, the hard-right nationalist has dismissed social distancing as a job-killer and promoted the untested hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for the virus.

Dubbed the “Tropical Trump” due to his similar style of governance, Bolsonaro has failed to implement widespread testing in his nation, one of the biggest in the world, giving health officials a limited understanding of the virus’s true extent. His frequent clashes with medical experts have also left Brazil without a permanent health minister since April.

Brazil's lack of sufficient testing likely means that there is a far higher number of cases than reported. A medical research team in Sao Paulo noted in May that the actual number of cases could actually be 16 times higher than reported.

“There are questions about really how much testing is going on in most of the areas worst-affected, which may also influence the numbers,” Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, the Washington Office on Latin America’s director of the Andes region, said in a statement to CBS News.

In the early stages of the pandemic, Italy and Spain were considered among the biggest coronavirus hotspots. Both countries have seen improvements after strong lockdown measures.