Last year, Jair Bolsonaro declared Brazil had reached ‘the tail end’ of one of the world’s worst outbreaks. Three months later the country has lost almost 100,000 more lives

It was midway through February when André Machado realized Brazil’s coronavirus catastrophe was racing into a bewildering and remorseless new phase. “The floodgates opened and the water came gushing out,” recalled the infectious disease specialist from the Our Lady of the Conception hospital in Porto Alegre, one of the largest cities in southern Brazil.

Related: Experts warn Brazil facing darkest days of Covid crisis as deaths hit highest level

Addressing the nation, Brazil’s former president left no doubt that his political fightback had begun

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has excoriated Jair Bolsonaro’s “moronic” and bungling response to the coronavirus pandemic, in a stirring and potentially historic address widely seen as the start of a bid to wrestle the presidency back from his far-right nemesis.

The veteran leftist, who led Latin America’s top economy through some of the brightest years in its modern history, was catapulted back onto the frontline of Brazilian politics on Monday by the surprise decision to quash the corruption convictions that scuppered his bid to reclaim the presidency in 2018. On Tuesday a supreme court judge branded the anti-corruption operation that forced Lula from that year’s election “the greatest judicial scandal” in Brazilian history.