RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro said yesterday that he is “living proof” of chloroquine’s efficacy against Covid-19, a drug that is not scientifically proven to cure the disease, and that he said he took when he was infected.
“We know that over 100,000 people died in Brazil. If they had been treated with this drug from the start, many deaths could have been prevented. Those who criticized chloroquine offered no alternatives,” said Bolsonaro at a public event in Belém, Pará.
Bolsonaro, one of the heads of state most skeptical about the severity of the pandemic, was infected with a very light case of the novel coronavirus in July and said he recovered thanks to chloroquine, a drug used in the treatment of diseases like malaria, but whose efficacy against Covid-19 is challenged by most of the international scientific community.
Nine government Ministers have also been infected with the virus, and have recovered, as has the President’s own wife, Michelle Bolsonaro. On Wednesday, the first lady was notified of the death of her 81-year-old maternal grandmother, a victim of Covid-19.
At the event in Belém, Bolsonaro announced that the federal government will send 400,000 chloroquine tablets to state authorities in Pará, because despite “no scientific evidence, there are many doctors who recommend it.”
On March 21st, when Brazil had only a thousand cases of Covid-19 and very few deaths, Bolsonaro ordered the Brazilian army to ramp up its manufacturing capacity of chloroquine tablets, setting a goal of 1 million produced per week; by late April over 500,000 were produced each week.
Bolsonaro’s second Health Minister, Nelson Teich, was sacked on May 15th after only 30 days in office, when he refused to order the inclusion of chloroquine in the list of medicine approved for treatment of Covid-19.
Pará, located in the Brazilian Amazon, is home to approximately eight million people and, according to the latest official reports, has recorded 173,625 cases of the novel coronavirus and a total of 5,917 deaths to date.
Brazil totals 104,201 deaths and 3,164,785 confirmed Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, making it the second-most affected country in the world behind the United States.
The Covid-19 pandemic has already caused over 749,000 deaths and infected more than 20.6 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.