THE Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) has warned that the country is undergoing “the greatest health and hospital crisis in history” after the coronavirus death toll passed 300,000.

The National Council of Health Secretaries announced the grim milestone on Wednesday night. Only the United States has had more people die from Covid-19.

PCdoB parliamentary leader Renildo Calheiros called on President Jair Bolsonaro to “wake up” and stop undermining the public health response as hospitals in the capital Brasilia reported lining their floors with corpses because their morgues are full.

With the country’s health system overrun, thousands of critically ill patients are waiting for intensive care beds to become available.

Mr Calheiros said that, though evidence of the danger posed by Covid-19 had mounted for over a year, the president “preferred to deny science, access to vaccines and publicly discourage preventive measures, such as wearing masks and social isolation.

“Unfortunately, he has now demonstrated that it is not a ‘little flu’,” he said, a reference to Mr Bolsonaro’s infamous dismissal of the new virus last year.

With MPs from parties of both left and right saying that they were fielding calls from desperate constituents with dying relatives unable to get into hospital, even allies of the president have called on him to change course. 

Lower house Speaker Arthur Lira acknowledged that the public mood was turning to anger on Wednesday. “There is a lot of solidarity, but everything has its limits. Everything,” he said.

Mr Bolsonaro tried to strike an upbeat note on Tuesday in an address to the nation in which he promised that 2021 would be “the year of vaccination.” But in many cities, residents met the address with pot-banging protests to drown out his words.

The Communist Party pointed out that not only has the Bolsonaro administration itself refused to enforce social distancing or a lockdown, this month it tried – and failed – to get the Supreme Court to reverse such measures adopted by individual states.

PCdoB MP Daniel Almeida said he hoped that Tuesday’s address presaged a change of policy. “It seems that despair is knocking on Bolsonaro’s door. The shocking thing is that we need record deaths for many people to pay attention to the irresponsibility of the government. Over 300,000 lives lost? It’s genocide.”