Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been tested to find out if he is a carrier of the coronavirus, one of his sons, MP Eduardo Bolsonaro, said on Thursday (March 12th).
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"President Jair Bolsonaro has tested the coronavirus and we are awaiting the result," the son of the head of state wrote on his Twitter account. "However, he has no symptoms of the disease," he added.
Shortly before, the presidential palace had announced that Fabio Wajngarten, the head of the press service of Jair Bolsonaro who accompanied the president to the United States last week and rubbed shoulders with the American president Donald Trump, was carrying the coronavirus. Questioned by AFP, the presidential palace did not wish to say if Jair Bolsonaro had undergone a screening test.
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The president canceled a trip Thursday morning and had nothing on his official schedule for the day. Eduardo Bolsonaro was also part of the president's delegation to the United States, as was Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, whose services announced Thursday that he was returning from Washington earlier than expected to also be tested screening in Brazil.
Brazil, a huge country of 210 million inhabitants, has registered only 60 contaminations and no deaths to date due to the new coronavirus, which has caused nearly 5,000 deaths worldwide and of which Jair Bolsonaro estimated that the severity had been "overestimated" .
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