Sao Paulo | Joao Doria, the governor of Sao Paulo, the state most heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil, announced on Wednesday that he was positive for COVID-19 and continued to perform his duties in quarantine.
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“Unfortunately I am positive, I have the coronavirus. I am totally asymptomatic, I feel good, I will go home and will follow the medical protocol (of containment) for the next ten days, ”said the governor in a video posted on his Twitter account.
Eleven of the 27 governors have been infected with the coronavirus, including that of the state of Rio de Janeiro, the 2nd most affected in Brazil, Wilson Witzel, in a country where the pandemic has killed more than 103,000.
President Jair Bolsonaro, 65, and eight of his ministers were also infected, as was the mayor of the metropolis of Sao Paulo, Bruno Covas.
Joao Doria, 62, had been treated as a “dictator” by the president, like all the governors who imposed confinement on their citizens at the start of the health crisis.
But the State of Sao Paulo, the country’s economic powerhouse, began deconfinement in early June, with the reopening of its restaurants, bars and shops.
This start of resumption of activity had been deemed premature by epidemiologists in view of the still very high contaminations curves in the second most affected country in the world, behind the United States.
The state of Sao Paulo – the most populous in the country with 46 million inhabitants – holds the record for cases of contamination of COVID-19, with 639,562 (or 20% of the national total) and deaths, with 25,571 (24%), according to the latest data from the Ministry of Health.