Brazil must publish COVID-19 data in full, says Supreme Court justice

Brazil's top court waded into the controversy surrounding official reporting of coronavirus death and infection figures, as a Supreme Court justice ruled the Health Ministry must revert to releasing the full set of data it had previously made available.

In a statement posted to the Supreme Court website in the early hours of Tuesday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes said the Health Ministry must "fully re-establish the daily dissemination of epidemiological data on the COVID-19 pandemic, including on the agency's website, under the terms presented until last Thursday."

It came after Brazil removed troves of detailed coronavirus data and said it would no longer publish cumulative totals but daily increase numbers over the weekend.

The government's actions in recent days have made it "impossible" to monitor the spread of the virus and to implement adequate and necessary control and prevention policies, he said. Failure to adopt internationally recognized methods of data collection, analysis, and dissemination could have "disastrous consequences" for Brazil, Moraes said.

On Monday evening, the health ministry had rowed back on its earlier position, saying that it would release data earlier and dismissing allegations that numbers were being manipulated

(With input from Reuters)