The worsening of the health crisis in Brazil means that, with 2.7% of the world's population, it accounts for a quarter of the daily deaths from coronavirus on the planet, according to Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
Despite the spectacular nature of these figures, in terms of the death rate per million inhabitants, the country that has now become the epicenter of the pandemic is still below those of Belgium, the United States or Spain, according to the count of Our World in Data, although suffers from significant underreporting of cases.
And every day the difference is reduced because the death toll continues to climb.
The State of São Paulo, which has 46 million inhabitants, like Spain, has exceeded the threshold of one thousand dead in a single day on Tuesday.
At its worst, Spain surpassed 900.
While Brazil is horrified by videos of corpses dumped in morgues or ICUs, the Brazilian president insists on minimizing the severity of the health crisis and persists in his battle against the efforts of other authorities.
Jair Bolsonaro remains unconvinced of the usefulness of the measures that limit the movement of people to contain the advance of the covid.
After a year of this pandemic that has killed almost 300,000 Brazilians, the president has gone to court in addition to insisting in his speech that quarantines harm the poor more and that the people need to go out to work.
Bolsonaro filed an appeal against the decrees by which the governors of the States of Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul and the Federal District (of different parties) have imposed restrictions due to the spectacular increase in ICU admissions and the collapse of the hospital network .
One of the high court judges rejected the president's appeal on Tuesday.
Brazilian hospitals still distribute chloroquine in "preventive treatment kits" against covid-19
In his appeal, Bolsonaro demanded that the judges of the Brazilian high court rule that the closure of non-essential activities belongs to Congress and cannot be adopted by the governors, according to G1, d the Globo group.
For the president, the governors are tyrants who curtail the freedoms of citizenship protected by the health crisis.
“Should I change my speech, give in, as the vast majority are doing?
If they convince me otherwise, I will, but they haven't convinced me yet.
We must fight the virus, not the president.
This is not a message for anyone, ”Bolsonaro declared this Monday, the day after hundreds of bankers and economists joined in a public letter to demand strong, coordinated measures from the president and the federal government, confidence in science, more efforts to buy vaccines and to put aside once and for all the false dilemma between the economic crisis and the health crisis.
While Brazilian diplomats try to get intubation kits abroad, vaccination continues but at a slow pace due to lack of doses.
The president of Telefónica in Brazil, Christian Gebara, insisted this Tuesday in an interview with the newspaper
Estadão
on what in his opinion should be the priorities to resume growth as soon as possible: mass vaccination of the population together with tax and administrative reforms .
Almost all the efforts of the governors to adopt in a coordinated manner measures to reduce the speed of transmission of the virus have been unsuccessful so far, so that the limitations on the transit of people or the closure of trade are very unequal throughout the territory, although the The situation is extremely serious in almost every corner of the country.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, governors and mayors have been imposing the restrictions that they have considered necessary in view of the fact that Bolsonaro and the government he presides have resigned to assume the reins of the fight against coronavirus beyond sending extra funds to the States, to pay for months a covid pay and negotiate the purchase of part of the vaccines.
As if that were not enough, at the worst moment of the crisis, the inauguration of Marcelo Quiroga, the doctor chosen by the president as his fourth health minister in the pandemic, has been delayed for more than a week.
This Tuesday he took office in a discreet ceremony in Brasilia.
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