Brazil COVID deaths hit new monthly record as France tightens restrictions

The COVID-19 death toll spiraled out of control in Brazil in March, more than doubling the country's previous monthly record, officials said on March 31, as French President Emmanuel Macron announced a limited nationwide lockdown.

In a sign of the devastation the virus is still causing while the world races to roll out vaccines, Brazil reported 66,573 people had died of COVID-19 in March - more than twice as many fatalities as the country's second-deadliest month of the pandemic, July 2020.

France meanwhile became the latest European country to relent to stubbornly high coronavirus cases, despite Macron's repeated vows not to reintroduce a national lockdown.

The virus has killed more than 2.8 million people since it emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. And though the world is looking to vaccines to end the upheaval COVID-19 has brought, rollouts are off to a sputtering start in many countries.

That includes Brazil, where health experts say the explosion of cases is partly driven by a local variant of the virus known as P1, which can re-infect people who have had the original strain and is believed to be more contagious.

"Never in Brazilian history have we seen a single event kill so many people" in one month, said doctor Miguel Nicolelis, former pandemic response coordinator for Brazil's impoverished northeast.

With the southern hemisphere winter approaching and the virus spreading fast, Brazil is facing "a perfect storm," he told AFP.

"That's a threat not just for Brazil but for the entire world."

The surge in Brazil has overwhelmed hospitals and forced doctors to make agonizing decisions over whom to give life-saving care - prioritizing those most likely to survive.

"We're in a very...