The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has assured a day after confirming that he has contracted COVID-19 that it is “very good”, suggesting that it is thanks to hydroxychloroquine and warning his critics that he is confident of “still living a long time “
Bolsonaro, who for months disdained the lethality of the new coronavirus, confirmed on Tuesday that he had tested positive himself, in a questioned appearance before the media in which, immediately after speaking, he took off his mask.
The president had mild symptoms – fever of up to 38 degrees – and this Wednesday he reappeared with a series of messages on social networks. In one of them he regretted that there are those who criticize hydroxychloroquine without offering “alternatives”: “I regret to inform you that I am very good with its use and, God willing, I will still live a long time.”
He has also defended the measures taken by his government to stop COVID-19, alleging that “lives and jobs were saved without spreading panic, which also leads to depression and death.” “I have always said that combating the virus could not have a worse side effect than the virus itself,” he added.
In this sense, he pointed out that the confinement measures decreed at the state and local levels only had the objective of “delaying the contagion” and buying time until hospitals could prepare themselves, receiving new respirators and enabling beds in intensive care units.
Brazil is, today, the second country most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, only behind the United States. Accumulates more than 1.6 million cases and more than 66,700 deaths, according to the balance collected by Johns Hopkins University.
