Brazil’s death toll from COVID-19 passed the 300,000 mark on Wednesday, according to its Health Ministry.

A total of 300,685 people in Brazil have now died of Covid-19, the health ministry said, as the country struggled to deal with an explosion of cases blamed on a local variant of the virus that is believed to be more contagious.

Brazil currently has the highest daily death toll in the pandemic by far. It has more than tripled since the start of the year, to an average of 2,273 for the past week.

President Jair Bolsonaro’s fourth health minister used his first official day in the job to pledge a vaccination goal of 1 million shots a day to put the brakes on the snowballing crisis.

Latin America’s biggest country, already home to the world’s second-highest coronavirus death toll after the United States, has become the global epicenter of COVID-19 deaths, with one in four global fatalities currently a Brazilian.

President Jair Bolsonaro announced earlier he was launching a crisis committee to deal with the pandemic, a change of course amid mounting pressure over a situation he has repeatedly minimized.

The far-right president vowed no one would “politicize” the pandemic, after a meeting with the heads of both houses of Congress, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the central bank chief, most of his cabinet and six of Brazil’s 27 governors.

“The prevailing sentiment was solidarity and the commitment to minimize the effects of the pandemic,” Bolsonaro said at the presidential palace.

The new wave of Covid-19 has pushed many hospitals to the breaking point, with intensive care beds and oxygen supplies at critically low levels.

The Pan American Health Organization warned Tuesday that the situation in Brazil was “dire,” and threatening the rest of the region.

“The virus continues to surge dangerously across Brazil,” PAHO director Carissa Etienne said in Washington.

“Cases and deaths are increasing, and ICU bed occupancy is very high in many states.”