Truncated and increasingly late assessments, divergent figures: data on deaths and cases of contamination of the coronavirus have been released for several days in the most total confusion by the Brazilian government, causing an avalanche of criticism.
Denouncing a "statistical coup", the daily Folha de Sao Paulo accuses this Monday in a virulent editorial of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro of wanting to "stifle" the data of Covid-19, "as if he could censor them. "
Small flu and big numbers
In open war with the media, the Head of State has unambiguously justified his intention to disseminate the data after the main television news: "there will be no more subject (on the official figures) at Jornal Nacional", a he said on Friday evening, quoting the TV news from TV Globo.
President Bolsonaro has constantly downplayed the pandemic, calling it a "little flu" and calling for the resumption of economic activities while the curves remain on the rise, with more than 36,000 deaths.
Increasingly incomplete balance sheets
Since the beginning of last week, the official report of the Ministry of Health, which was made public at 5 p.m. at the start of the health crisis, is only sent to the press around 10 p.m. And as of Friday, the bulletin no longer showed the total number of confirmed cases and deaths, presenting only the figures for the past 24 hours.
Worse still, Carlos Wizard, a business man approached to occupy a high-level post in the ministry, had announced Friday evening to the newspaper O Globo that the official balance sheet was going to be revised down due to "fanciful and manipulated" figures. .
The outraged regional health authorities
A statement that outraged the regional health authorities responsible for compiling the data, which lambasted "an authoritarian, inhuman and unethical attempt to make the dead of the coronavirus invisible".
Carlos Wizard denied on Saturday any plans to revise the figures already announced and ended up giving up his job in the ministry on Sunday after calls on the internet to boycott his companies. "The manipulation of statistics is a maneuver worthy of totalitarian regimes," said Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes on Twitter on Saturday.
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