Brazil coronavirus death toll reaches 61,884; remains world's 2nd worst

Rio de Janeiro - The grim news comes as Rio de Janeiro's bars and restaurants reopened Thursday after more than three months of coronavirus lockdown, despite criticism by health specialists in Brazil.

Brazil registered 1,252 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 61,884, the Ministry of Health said on Thursday.
Total confirmed cases rose by 48,105 to reach 1,496,858, the second-worst outbreak in the world behind the United States.
The grim news comes as Rio de Janeiro's bars and restaurants reopened Thursday after more than three months of coronavirus lockdown, despite criticism by health specialists in Brazil.
As part of a phased return to normality, bars, restaurants and cafes are authorized to reopen to 50 per cent capacity, with a distance of two meters between tables and priority given to open-air dining and drinking.
Rio's gyms, beauty and tattoo parlours may also open on a staggered basis, to avoid crowding.
"There is nothing to celebrate, but we have been in this fight since March," Rio's Mayor Marcelo Crivella said on Wednesday.
"Low demand for intensive care and hospital beds and the stabilized death toll show us that we had a dark peak in May and then dropped to current levels," he said.
The city, rimmed with beaches and mountains that normally draw tourists from around the world, registered 68 new deaths from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours. The number has fluctuated in recent weeks after peaking on June 3 with 227 deaths.
Although the disease is migrating inland -- a trend throughout Brazil -- specialists warn that the infection rate is still high and that relaxing social isolation measures now could put the health system under pressure again.
When the process of reopening began a month ago, the Reproduction Number or "R number" -- the average number of people that one infected person will pass the virus on to -- was 1. Currently it is 1.51, said Roberto Medronho, director of research at Rio's Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital.
"That number will increase even more with reopening, bringing health problems to our population," Medronho told AFP. 
Reopening now, he said, is "premature and inopportune."
Margareth Dalcomo, a specialist at Brazil's public health institute Fiocruz said the reopening plan "is a disaster."
"We could have saved many lives with more strict confinement from April," she said.
Even at the pandemic's height, Rio authorities opted for a relatively loose lockdown, with no coercive measures taken to ensure people stayed home. 
The city's decree was limited to a ban on visiting beaches and the closure of shops deemed non-essential.
Rio de Janeiro state, the second-hardest hit Brazilian region after Sao Paulo, has already surpassed 10,000 deaths, more than 60 per cent of them in Rio municipality, and more than 115,000 infections.