RIO DE JANEIRO | Nearly half of Brazilians believe President Jair Bolsonaro is not responsible for the more than 100,000 deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey released by the newspaper on Saturday Folha from Sao Paulo.
• Read also: All developments in the COVID-19 pandemic
47% of people surveyed by the Datafolha Institute believe that Bolsonaro “is in no way responsible” for the high number of deaths, 41% consider him “one of the responsible [mais pas le principal]”, And 11% consider him” the main responsible “for this assessment.
The first results of the survey carried out on August 11 and 12 on the basis of 2,065 telephone interviews had already shown, on Friday, that Bolsonaro remained more popular than ever since the start of his mandate in 2019, despite criticism from many specialists in his pandemic management.
Its approval rate has increased five points since June, from 32% to 37%, and its rejection rate has dropped ten points, from 44% to 34%.
Its popularity has grown among the millions of Brazilians who have received emergency aid of at least 600 reais per month (around 93 euros) to mitigate the consequences of the economic crisis.
The pandemic has killed more than 106,500 people in Brazil, where it has infected more than 3.2 million people.
Since the onset of the health emergency in March, Bolsonaro has played down its severity and confronted regional governors who wanted to put social distancing measures in place to curb the contagion.
The president believed that it was a “worse than evil” cure, because of the economic consequences.
Bolsonaro, who said he was infected with the coronavirus in July, also claims to have been cured by the use of chloroquine, a remedy whose effectiveness has not been scientifically proven.