With hours of live broadcasts, hearings and verbal battles that at times almost resulted in scuffle, the Brazilian Senate's committee of inquiry into the government's role in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic was a spectacle.

Some senators, who themselves have a dubious reputation, played themselves as moral apostles.

Others just enjoyed the limelight.

Still others discredited the committee as a tool to attack President Jair Bolsonaro.

A lot of emotions were involved.

And yet the committee has managed to shed light on the mix of negation, quackery and incompetence with which the government is responding to a pandemic that to date has killed 600,000 Brazilians.

Tjerk Brühwiller

Correspondent for Latin America based in São Paulo.

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The final report, which is over a thousand pages long, recommends indictments against a total of seventy people and two companies allegedly guilty of 24 different offenses.

In addition to President Bolsonaro, the list includes four current and three former ministers, a number of officials, doctors, entrepreneurs and others.

Bolsonaro are accused of crimes against humanity, among other things.

In its original version, indictments of murder and genocide against indigenous peoples were recommended against the president.

However, these two points have been removed.

Further adjustments could follow in the coming days.

Probably in a week the committee will vote on the report.

"Unfounded belief in the idea of ​​herd immunity"

Regardless of its ultimate version, the report paints a devastating picture. Chapter by chapter, he documents the failure of a government that initially refused to acknowledge the pandemic and then took the wrong measures. Bolsonaro's actions were based on his "unfounded belief in the idea of ​​herd immunity from natural infections and the existence of early treatments," the report said.

In fact, to this day, Bolsonaro is promoting the active ingredient chloroquine, the effect of which against the coronavirus has not been proven.

He held the medicine pack up to the cameras several times.

But he did not leave it to his personal convictions.

The Brazilian Army's pharmaceutical laboratories have been told to produce chloroquine.

A so-called preventive kit was touted by the Ministry of Health, among others.

A private health care provider had even administered the drug to its patients in some cases without their knowledge - allegedly with the backing from Brasília - and apparently falsified studies on it.

Legal consequences are likely to be limited for the time being

Obtaining vaccines is one of the main points of the investigation. When Brasília received the first offers for contracts for millions of vaccine doses early last year, it did nothing. Emails from manufacturers went unanswered for weeks. Instead, the president warned of side effects, such as turning into a crocodile. Bolsonaro ridiculed the efforts of the state of São Paulo to produce its own vaccines in cooperation with a Chinese manufacturer. His "deliberate and deliberate" decision to delay the purchase of Covid vaccines has unnecessarily killed thousands of citizens, the report says.

When the government finally started vaccinating, some employees discovered the multi-million dollar business behind it. The discovery of a corruption case in the procurement of the Indian Covaxin vaccine is one of the most far-reaching findings of the committee of inquiry. According to a witness, the president was said to have been informed of the irregularities but did not act. The deal with the Indians did not materialize, however. Nevertheless, the case has sparked a series of further investigations by other authorities.

The legal consequences for Bolsonaro should be limited, at least as long as he is president.

The political consequences, however, are likely to be more serious.

Political actors turn away from him.

In any case, Bolsonaro's popular support hit a low one year before the presidential election.

The report, which puts him to blame for the deaths of tens of thousands of Brazilians, is likely to cause him further damage.

The report closes with the words: "We will never forget it."