RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil, the country with the world’s second-highest Covid-19 death toll after the United States, also leads the Americas and the entire southern hemisphere in terms of its overall recorded death rate.

With 176 deaths per 100,000 since the beginning of the outbreak, the country of 212 million has recently overtaken Peru (174 per 100,000), the United States (172 per 100,000) and Mexico (165 per 100,000) according to data gathered by AFP from official country reports.

Overall, the country has had nearly 375,000 deaths, after the United States’ nearly 568,000.

Hit hard by a more infectious new strain dubbed P1, Brazil may surpass Britain (187 per 100,000) and Italy (194 per 100,000) — two of the countries hit hardest at the start of the outbreak — in less than a month, said demographer Jose Eustaquio Alves.

“Brazil broke all the death records in March and April and made a leap in the rankings... to reach the worst mortality rate in the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere,” he told AFP.

Last week, Brazil’s averaged about 3,000 deaths per day.