Since the pandemic's start, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro scoffed at the "little flu" and lambasted local leaders for imposing restrictions on activity; he said the economy must keep humming along to prevent worse hardship.

Whereas other countries' daily cases and deaths have fallen, Latin America's largest nation is parked on an elevated plateau - a grim repeat of mid-2020.

In each of the past five weeks, Brazil has averaged more than 1000 daily deaths. Official data showed a confirmed death toll of 251,498 on Thursday.

At least 12 Brazilian states are in the midst of a second wave even worse than the one faced in 2020.

In Amazonas state, where the capital, Manaus, saw hospitals run out of oxygen last month, there have been more than 5000 deaths in the first two months of the year, about as many as in all of 2020.

The spread continues to be facilitated by authorities' reluctance to follow recommendations from international health organisations to implement stricter restrictions on activity.

Sao Luis, capital city of northeastern Maranhao state, was the first Brazilian city to go into full lockdown last May. It was successful, notwithstanding Bolsonaro's efforts to undermine the restrictions and sow doubt about their efficacy.

Bolsonaro's administration has also adopted a hands-off approach regarding the vaccination campaign. It relied mostly on a deal to purchase a single vaccine, AstraZeneca, which has been slow in coming.

The national immunisation to date has relied mostly on Chinese-made CoronaVac shots secured by Sao Paulo state, though the federal government is now trying to buy others.

Brazil's decades of experience with successful vaccination programs and its large nationwide public health care network led many experts to believe that immunisation - even if it were to start with delay - would be a relatively speedy affair. In previous campaigns, the nation of 210 million was able to vaccinate as many as 10 million people in a single day, health experts noted.

Five weeks after the first shot, Brazil has delivered shots to only 3.6 per cent of its population. That is more than double Argentina and Mexico, but less than one-fourth that of Chile, according to Our World in Data, an online research site that compares official government statistics.

Meantime, the virus continues to run rampant across Brazil, and take its toll.

In the city of Araraquara, in the interior of Sao Paulo state, there have been more deaths so far this year than all of last year and intensive-care unit occupancy reached 110 per cent.

Local authorities responded on February 21 by announcing a full lockdown - the second of its kind since the beginning of the pandemic.

ICU occupancy has since dipped to 100 per cent.

Australian Associated Press