Brazil will consider leaving WHO unless it ceases to be a “partisan political organization”.
BRASILIA:
President Jair Bolsonaro threatened Friday to withdraw Brazil from the World Health Organization after the United Nations agency warned Latin American governments of the risk of lifting the bans before slowing the spread of the new coronavirus in the region.
A new Brazilian record for daily deaths from COVID-19 pushed the death toll in the county beyond that of Italy late Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to advocate for the rapid lifting of segregation orders. State, arguing that the economic costs outweigh the risks to public health.
The most populous countries in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, experience the highest rates of new infections, although the pandemic is also accelerating in countries like Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.
Overall, more than 1.1 million Latin Americans have been infected. While most leaders have taken the pandemic more seriously than Bolsonaro, some politicians who supported tight closings in March and April are pushing for economic recovery as hunger and poverty increase.
In an editorial covering the front page of S. Paulo’s Folha newspaper, the Brazilian daily noted that only 100 days had passed since Bolsonaro had described the virus now “killing one Brazilian per minute” as “a little flu”.
“While you are reading this, another Brazilian died from the coronavirus,” the newspaper said.
The Brazilian Ministry of Health announced Thursday evening that the number of confirmed cases in the country had exceeded 600,000 and that 1,437 deaths had been recorded in 24 hours, the third consecutive daily record.
Brazil reported an additional 1,005 deaths on Friday evening, while Mexico reported an additional 625 deaths.
With more than 35,000 lives lost, the pandemic has killed more people in Brazil than anywhere else than in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Asked about efforts to ease social distancing orders in Brazil despite rising death rates and daily diagnoses, spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Harris, said one of the key criteria for lifting the bans was to slow transmission.
“The epidemic, the epidemic in Latin America is deeply, deeply worrying,” she said at a press conference in Geneva. Among the six key criteria for relaxing quarantines, she said, “one of them is ideally to see your transmission decrease.”
Bolsonaro said in comments to journalists on Friday that Brazil plans to leave WHO unless it ceases to be a “partisan political organization”.
President Donald Trump, an ideological ally of Bolsonaro, said last month that the United States would end its own relations with the WHO, accusing it of becoming a puppet of China, where the coronavirus appeared for the first time.
Bolsonaro’s rejection of coronavirus risks to public health and efforts to lift state quarantines have drawn criticism from all walks of life in Brazil, where some accuse him of using the crisis to undermine democratic institutions .
But many of these critics are divided on the safety and effectiveness of anti-government protests in the midst of a pandemic, particularly after a small protest was greeted by an overwhelming demonstration by police over the weekend.
Alfonso Vallejos Parás, epidemiologist and professor of public health at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that infections were high in Latin America because the virus was slow to spread in the region.
“It is difficult to estimate when the rate of infection will decrease,” he said.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
