Minister of Economy Guedes: “I do not accept the narrative that Brazil did not protect lives in the pandemic”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, said on Tuesday (12/10) that he “does not accept the narrative” that Brazil did not protect lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. The statement was made in English during an interview with CNN International after asking whether the Brazilian government had chosen to preserve the economy rather than lives. This holiday, the country records 601,000 victims of the coronavirus.

Guedes also said that the government is “very slowly taking off the layers of protection” that were put in place during the pandemic and that the country spent “more than twice as much as the emerging countries”. According to him, the amount disbursed by the federal management is 10% more than that spent by developed nations to preserve people’s health.

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“We spend more money-saving lives than you [United States]. We spend more money-saving lives than developed countries—10% more. And we use twice as much spending to preserve lives as the average emerging country,” he said.

“There is a lot of political noise saying we made the wrong decision. We made the right decision. Some additional help is exciting and essential to continue to protect lives,” he said.

Since the start of the pandemic in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) has positioned himself against lockdown and restrictive measures to curb the spread of the disease, in addition to successive criticisms of mass vaccination (the president has not yet immunized himself). As an argument, Bolsonaro argued that the economy could not be “melted down.”

Despite having taken the vaccine, Minister Paulo Guedes never contradicted the denialist phrases of the country’s president.

Another topic of the CNN interview was climate change. The issue is becoming increasingly urgent for the international community.

According to Guedes, the federal government will present at COP 26, a meeting to be held next month in Scotland, measures totaling US$2.5 billion to combat the problem. “Brazil is fully involved in the fight against climate change,” he declared.

Guedes will remain in the United States until October 14 to attend the Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and meetings with G-20 central bank presidents.

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