RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday, March 10th, during a speech at an event in Miami, United States, that the “coronavirus issue” is not “all that” and is much more of a “fantasy” spread by the media around the world.
On Monday, stock markets around the world experienced sharp downturns amid the spread of the virus and increased fears of a global recession with the dispute over the price of oil between Russia and Saudi Arabia. There were declines of over seven percent in US markets, the worst day since the 2008 crisis.
However, on Tuesday, the stock markets rebounded with an increase of more than two percent in the US and approximately three percent in Europe.
“We are obviously experiencing a crisis at the moment, a small crisis. In my opinion, the coronavirus issue is much more of a fantasy, and it is not all that the mainstream media is proclaiming or spreading around the world,” said the President.
The Covid-19, an infection caused by the new coronavirus, has already killed over 4,000 people around the world, according to a survey by Johns Hopkins University. Seventy-seven percent of the victims (3,140 people) were in China, the country where the outbreak began. On Monday, Brazil’s Ministry of Health confirmed 25 cases of the disease, with no deaths.
Although there is still no official percentage representing the mortality rate of the disease, by the end of February the rate stood at 3.5 percent of confirmed cases in China, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Outside China, the rate was 1.6 percent. Children under two years of age, pregnant women and adults aged 60 and over are considered the high-risk groups.
The number of cases of the disease has already recorded a downward trend in the Hubei province, where the epidemic began.
In the European Union, all 27 countries in the bloc have recorded at least one case of the disease. Italy is the most affected, with at least 7,375 cases, according to the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC).
Drop in markets and oil
In his speech, Bolsonaro further commented on the sharp drops in stock markets around the world and also on the decline in the price of the oil barrel, which depreciated the most in one day since 1991.
“Some of the press managed to make a crisis out of the drop in the price of oil. I think it’s better for it to drop 30 percent than to climb 30 percent. Problems in the stock market occur from time to time. The stock markets that are beginning to open around the world [on Tuesday] are showing some rebound signs,” he said.
Source: G1