After Donald Trump, it is the turn of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to threaten to leave the World Health Organization (WHO). After the United Nations agency warned Latin American governments of the risk of lifting containment measures before it successfully slowed the spread of the coronavirus epidemic in the region, the Brazilian head of state warned Friday June 5 that he could withdraw his country from WHO to protest against his "ideological bias".
>> Read: Covid-19: Brazil, the future epicenter of the epidemic?
"I tell you here, the United States left WHO, we are considering it in the future (...). Either WHO works without ideological bias, or we are leaving it too. "We don't need outsiders to give their feelings about health here," he told reporters in Brasilia.
The return of hydroxychloroquine
Throughout the coronavirus crisis, Bolsonaro mimicked Trump by minimizing the severity of the disease, urging him to maintain normal activity, and praising the effectiveness of a treatment that divides scientists, the hydroxychloroquine.
Speaking on the latter subject, the Brazilian president said he was not surprised that a study in the medical journal The Lancet, which concluded that the treatment was useless, was strongly questioned and then withdrawn. This withdrawal prompted the WHO to resume clinical trials on the molecule. "Trump took the money from them and they went back on everything," said Bolsonaro. "Chloroquine is back," he added.
On Thursday, a new death record put Brazil ahead of Italy in terms of death toll. However, Bolsonaro continues to demand a rapid lifting of the ordered isolation measures, saying that the economic cost of the epidemic outweighs the health risks.
“A slight flu”
In an editorial published in the Sao Paulo newspaper Folha, the daily noted that only 100 days have passed since Bolsonaro described the virus that "kills one Brazilian per minute" as "a mild flu".
"While you are reading this, a Brazilian died from the coronavirus," the newspaper said. The two most populous countries in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, see their rates of coronavirus infections be much higher than those of other countries in the region.
On Friday evening, Brazil reported an additional 1,005 deaths and Mexico recorded 625. The country became the third highest in the world, behind the United States and the United Kingdom, but ahead of Italy . In total, Brazil has identified more than 645,000 cases, a number that many specialists consider largely undervalued, due to the lack of sufficient tests.
With AFP and Reuters
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