Cases of the new coronavirus are overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Brazil as Latin America's largest nation veers closer to becoming one of the world's pandemic hot spots.

Rio de Janeiro's samba schools usually spend the year furiously sewing costumes for the city's blowout Carnival celebration. Now, nimble fingers are working to protect lives instead, making medical outfits for hospital workers who face a surge of coronavirus patients.

After questioning the seriousness of COVID-19, defying his own health ministry's recommendations and denouncing a "certain hysteria," Brazil's president is now projecting himself as leading the nation's response to the coronavirus crisis in what has become one of the biggest challenges to his presidency.

Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue, which appears to balance improbably atop Corcovado mountain, has withstood the worst of what the elements could muster for nearly nine decades. Now it, too, is succumbing to the outbreak of the new coronavirus.