BRASILIA | The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, again downplayed on Tuesday the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 162,000 people in the country, letting go that Brazil must cease “to be a country of queers”.
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“Today, there is only for the pandemic, we must put an end to that. I regret the dead, I regret them. We are all going to die one day, everyone here is going to die. It’s no use running away from that, running away from reality. We must stop being a country of queers. We must fight with our heads held high, fight, ”launched the far-right president during a speech on tourism at the Planalto Palace, seat of the federal government.
“You were on the ground during this pandemic, which was oversized,” he also said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 162,000 lives in Brazil and infected some 5.6 million people, an underestimated figure according to experts.
Jair Bolsonaro had previously hailed as a “victory” the suspension, in Brazil, of phase 3 clinical trials of a vaccine against COVID-19, the CoronaVac from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac.
“Death, disability, abnormalities … that’s it, the vaccine that Doria wanted to force all the inhabitants of Sao Paulo to receive”, launched Tuesday the president of the extreme right on Facebook, in reference to the governor of the state from Sao Paulo, his political opponent Joao Doria.
“Another victory for Jair Bolsonaro,” wrote the head of state on Facebook, in response to a user who asked him if the government would agree to acquire or locally produce the vaccine in question if its effectiveness was proven.