SAO PAULO, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Brazil registered 29,922 new COVID-19 cases and 196 more deaths from the disease in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health reported Saturday.
The country's total caseload has now risen to 29,832,179, with the death toll reaching 658,762, according to the ministry.
Brazil continues to rank second in the world in the number of deaths from COVID-19, following the United States, and third in the number of cases, following the United States and India.
For the first time since July 2020, intensive care units in all states in the country are below the level of complete collapse or saturation, according to the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a Brazilian scientific institution for research and development in biological sciences.
Brazil has recently relaxed masking and social distancing rules due to the declining number of new cases.
As of Friday, 159.7 million people, or 74.3 percent of the country's population, had been fully vaccinated against the disease and 74.8 million, 34.8 percent of the population, had received booster doses, according to official data. ■
