Bolsonaro threatens to pull Brazil from WHO over 'ideological bias'
06 June, 2020
President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out from the World Health Organization following the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus through the entire region.
A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county’s death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the monetary costs outweigh public health threats.
Latin America’s most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, although pandemic can be gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.
Overall, more than 1.1 million Latin Americans have been infected. Some leaders took the pandemic more seriously than Bolsonaro, some politicians that backed strict lockdowns in March and April are pushing to open economies back up as hunger and poverty grow.
In an editorial running the distance of newspaper Folha de S.Paulo’s front page, the Brazilian daily highlighted that just 100 days had passed since Bolsonaro described the virus now “killing a Brazilian each and every minute” as “just a little flu.”
“While you were scanning this, another Brazilian died from the coronavirus,” the newspaper said.
Brazil’s Health Ministry reported late on Thursday that confirmed cases in the united states had climbed past 600,000 and 1,437 deaths have been registered within a day, the 3rd consecutive daily record.
Brazil reported another 1,005 deaths Friday night, while Mexico reported 625 additional deaths.
With an increase of than 35,000 lives lost, the pandemic has killed more persons in Brazil than anywhere outside of america and the United Kingdom.
Asked about efforts to loosen social distancing orders in Brazil despite rising daily death rates and diagnoses, World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Margaret Harris said a key criteria for lifting lockdowns was slowing transmission.
“The epidemic, the outbreak, in Latin America is deeply, deeply concerning,” she told a news conference in Geneva. Among six key requirements for easing quarantines, she said, “one of these is ideally having your transmission declining.”
In comments to journalists later Friday, Bolsonaro said Brazil will consider leaving the WHO unless it ceases to become a “partisan political organization.”
President Donald Trump, an ideological ally of Bolsonaro, said last month that the United States would end its relationship with the WHO, accusing it of becoming a puppet of China, where in fact the coronavirus first emerged.
Bolsonaro’s dismissal of the coronavirus risks to public health insurance and efforts to lift state quarantines have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum in Brazil, where some accuse him of using the crisis to undermine democratic institutions.
But a lot of those critics are divided about the safety and effectiveness of anti-government demonstrations in the center of a pandemic, especially after one small protest was met with an overwhelming show of police last weekend.
Alfonso Vallejos Parás, an epidemiologist and professor of public health at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said infections are saturated in Latin America as the virus was slow to get a foothold in your community.
“It is hard to estimate when the pace of infection will come down,” he said.
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