Drauzio Varella said of Jair Bolsonaro: ‘I think history will ascribe to him a level of guilt that I really wouldn’t want for myself.’ Photograph: Sergio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
The politicization of the coronavirus crisis and the Brazilian government’s deliberate “torpedoing” of social distancing efforts has condemned South America’s largest country to a historic tragedy that will most punish the poor, Brazil’s most respected medical voice has said.
As Brazil’s death toll surpassed that of Italy, Drauzio Varella told the Guardian that historians would be unkind to President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing international condemnation for his handling of the pandemic.
“I think history will ascribe to him a level of guilt that I really wouldn’t want for myself,” said Varella, an oncologist, author and broadcaster who is a household name thanks to decades of public health activism.
Only two countries, the US and the UK, have lost more lives, and Brazil seems poised to overtake the latter. Brazilhas confirmed 615,000 cases, second only to the US.
“Because in Brazil we are already the third country in the world in terms of deaths, we will soon become the second, and we are going to come close to the level of mortality in the US, which has 330 million citizens – that’s 60% larger than Brazil’s population,” predicted Varella.
“The situation couldn’t be worse. It just couldn’t.”
He added: “I’ve the feeling our country is living through a tragedy – and that this tragedy is going to be so much more severe for the poorest,” who often lived in cramped, precarious conditions and had no choice but to go out to work and use packed public transport.
Brazil has officially suffered 34,021 Covid-19 deaths since confirming its first fatality in mid-March and on Thursday registered a daily record of 1,473 fatalities.
That means that a Brazilian is now dying to Covid-19 every minute, the Folha de São Paulo newspaper noted on Friday’s front page.
Three days of Joghurt
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/brazil-coronavirus-covid-19-virus-doctor