RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Brazil registered 407 deaths in the last 24 hours from the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of deaths to 159,884, the Ministry of Health said Saturday.

A worker disinfects a stretcher before the closed-door Copa Sudamericana second round football match between Brazil's Vasco da Gama and Venezuela's Caracas at the Sao Januario stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 28, 2020, amid the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic. (File photo: AFP)

Meanwhile, 18,947 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded, bringing the total to 5,535,605.

Brazil ranks currently second in the world in terms of deaths from COVID-19, behind the United States, and third in number of cases, following the United States and India.

According to a state-run research center, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, 10 out of the 27 Brazilian state capitals have recently shown an upward trend in COVID-19 cases, seven of them with a sizable increase.

Sao Paulo, the largest city in the country and the epicenter of a  nationwide outbreak, showed signs of increasing infections for the first time after having seen a decline in cases in recent weeks.