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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AFP) — Latin America and the Caribbean on Monday passed 80,000 COVID-19 deaths, more than half in Brazil as the virus accelerates across the region, according to an AFP count based on official figures.

Since the disease first spread in Latin America in March, a total of 80,505 deaths have been recorded, 43,959 of them in Brazil which has the world’s second-highest number of fatalities after the United States.

The number of cases reported in Latin America and the Caribbean now stands at 1,681,378.

In Brazil, a country of 212 million, 888,271 people have been infected — more than in all of Asia.

Mexico, which has a population of 120 million, has Latin America’s second-highest death toll, with 17,141 fatalities out of 146,837 cases.

Peru has recorded 6,688 deaths while Chile, which has seen an acceleration in recent weeks, has nearly 180,000 cases and 3,362 deaths.

More than eight million cases of novel coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide.

At least 8,000,202 infections including 435,176 deaths, mostly in Europe, have been registered since the pandemic first emerged in China late last year.

The number of confirmed cases likely represents only a fraction of the real number because most countries are only testing the most serious cases or have limited testing capacity.