Global cases pass 6.3m; alert issued in Tokyo amid fear of new surge in cases –as it happened
Cases in Africa pass 150,000; Germany eases travel ban; Wuhan doctor who worked with whistleblower dies. This blog is now closed
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12.02am BST
A record 1,262 Covid-19 deaths have been recorded in Brazil today - taking the country's total death toll to 31,199 - but the president continues to downplay the pandemic.
The figures were announced on Tuesday evening by Brazil's health ministry, which also said the number of coronavirus cases had risen to 555,383, second only to the United States.
The South American country is now on the verge of overtaking Italy, where 33,530 deaths have been recorded, as the country with the third highest number of deaths.
But Brazil's far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has dismissed Covid-19 as a little flu", again brushed off the tragedy on Tuesday.
I regret each of the deaths - but that's everyone's destiny," Bolsonaro told supporters outside his palace in the capitalBrasilia.
Brazil's most populous state, Sao Paulo, registered a record number of deaths on Tuesday taking the total number of fatalities there to nearly 8,000. Rio de Janeiro has Brazil's second highest death toll with 5,686 deaths, followed by the northeastern state of Ceara where 3,421 people have died.
For all Bolsonaro's dismissiveness, scientists and medical experts believe the situation is dire and likely to get worse. Not even in our most dreadful nightmare could we have imagined the situation we are now in," Drauzio Varella, a doctor and broadcaster, wrote in one of Brazil's top newspapers last week.