RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta gave an interview to CNN in the United States on Wednesday, May 13th, in which he harshly criticized President Jair Bolsonaro and the way the government has been dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil.
Mandetta told Christiane Amanpour, the main anchor of the US broadcaster, that he was unaware of Bolsonaro’s Covid-19 test results, but referred to the President’s trip to the United States in March as the “corona trip”.
“What I know is right after he took a trip to the United States, where they all had dinner with the President, the communications official came back on the plane infected. Of the people who traveled with him, 17 tested positive within 15 days of arriving. That trip was a coronavirus trip,” he said.
Fired from the government for advocating social isolation measures, in opposition to Bolsonaro’s narrative, which downplays the pandemic, Mandetta projected that within the next few days Brazil should record at least 1,000 daily deaths from Covid-19.
“History will tell who was right and who was wrong. I think the numbers speak for themselves,” he said.
Mandetta also noted that, despite copying Donald Trump in several ways, the Brazilian President is still going in the opposite direction of the rest of the world with regard to measures to tackle the coronavirus.
“Unfortunately, he is one of the few world leaders who persist in this position that the economy should return at any cost and that the loss of jobs will be worse and that people should worry about how to keep the economy active. So it’s pretty hard to tell people that we should let the disease take its natural course and not expose ourselves. Trump at least reversed,” he said.
Source: Fórum