SAO PAULO (AP) – General Eduardo Pazuello became Brazil’s third fitness minister for the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday, after nearly 4 months in the interim position and nearly 120,000 deaths from COVID-19 in that period.
Pazuello, a logistics expert with no prior fitness experience before taking over as deputy fitness minister in April, follows two predecessors who left after disagreements with President Jair Bolsonaro over appropriate tactics to combat the new coronavirus.
“I’m going or going,” Pazuello joked in a rite at the Brazilian presidential palace in Brasilia. “It’s an unprecedented situation. “
Bolsonaro, who has minimized the dangers of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, attended the rite and re-promoted an antimalarial drug as a cure for the disease while accusing mayors and governors of restricting activities; those two charges are the ones that led to the departure of their former health ministers.
The South American country had recorded just over 15,000 COVID-19 deaths when General Pazuello took office as Acting Minister of Health in May, and over the next 3 months recorded an average of 1,000 deaths consistent with the day. This trend has slowed in recent years, weeks. The total number of deaths exceeded 134,000, the time globally after the United States.
“We have controlled a well-defined stability situation,” the new minister said Wednesday. “We had to replace the car tires as we went. “
There are several reasons why the number of cases and deaths in Brazil has remained at a higher level for so long: first, Brazil has a giant population, with about 210 million inhabitants, and a vast territory over the length of contiguous U. S. states. means that the virus first crossed the southeast and north regions and, after retreating to those areas, began attacking the mid-west and south regions.
According to Pedro Hallal, epidemiologist coordinating the epicovid19-BR of the Federal University of Pelotas, the country has never launched a surveillance formula or anything like effective contact studies that would help the government spread the call in Brazil. program, by far the country’s comprehensive maximum.
While mayors and governors have refused to impose European-style blockades, they have put in place radical restrictions on the activities they have been lifting since May. These attempts to curb contagion posed difficulties with Bolsonaro, who sabotaged his measures. Economics have an effect on the pandemic, they warn that the result of a sudden closure of the economy would be worse for Brazilians than the virus itself, as many live day by day.
Bolsonaro has dismissed his fitness minister for supporting the extensive quarantine measures of local leaders. The successor to this minister, who held the post for less than a month, resigned at the promotion of the president of antimalarial drugs as a coVID-19. In assuming interim office, Pazuello supported the national prescription of the drug and officially added its distribution through the ministry as a component of Brazil’s anti-virus measures.
“I congratulate all the doctors, especially those who were ambitious with hydroxychloroquine,” Bolsonaro said Wednesday, referring to the antimalarial. There is no clinical evidence that the drug is helping patients with COVID-19, and a framework of developing studies indicates what it does. and can also cause harmful side effects.
Bolsonaro made an exhibition of his departures from the presidential palace to relate to the decade-old unmasked reputation, he suspended that habit once he contracted the virus himself, but his rhetoric remained and said he was taking hydroxychloroquine pills. Despite all that has been defeated, the virus was consistent with its repeated claim – imitated through its fiery followers – that so-called fitness experts unnecessarily stoked panic.
Since being interim minister of Pazuello, he replaced dozens of doctors and specialists from Brazil’s Ministry of Fitness with military, which he called Wednesday “the restructuring of the ministry. “
He wore a mask but shook hands with many in the crowd, adding ministers, legislators and generals, any obvious social estating.
Pazuello’s new prestige is expected to create some tension within Brazil’s armed forces, as many of his colleagues say active duty as a minister is an unpleasant combination of the armed forces and the government. Pazuello didn’t say if he’d retire.
“As an army officer, I sense that your remaining active duty poses dangers to the symbol of force,” said Maynard Santa Rosa, retired army general and former Minister of Strategic Affairs. Santa Rosa added that Pazuello had controlled to break the track. with local authorities, who had helped their efforts to prevent the death toll in Brazil from emerging further.
One of the top movements criticized by Pazuello in the paintings took place in June, when Brazil’s Ministry of Health stopped publishing the total number of deaths by COVID-19 and showed cases of coronavirus on its website. He only subsidized after the country’s court ordered the government to resume full publication of the data.