Brazilian Governor Joao Doria, Sao Paulo State, called Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro a “psychopathic leader” and criticized the president’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in an interview with CNN’s Julia Chatterley on Monday.
“We are in one of those tragic moments in history when millions of people pay a dear price for having an unprepared and psychopathic leader in charge of a nation,” he said on CNN’s First Move.
Doria said much of the deaths from the virus in Brazil could have been avoided if Bolsonaro had “acted with the responsibility the position gives him.” He added that Bolsonaro “made incredible mistakes, the biggest being having a political dispute with the governors who are trying to protect the population.”
Bolsonaro has repeatedly opposed lockdowns and restrictive measures and criticized governors and mayors for their implementation. He has also greeted crowds of his supporters during the pandemic, without wearing a mask, and has advocated drugs such as hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus – a drug that has no proven effectiveness in the fight against Covid-19.
The governor went on to say that as governor of Brazil’s most populous state, he faces the greatest challenge of his life and that he needed to restructure the health care system in ‘record time’ and find ways to mitigate the economic crisis that hit the country. during the pandemic. Speaking about the state of seriousness of hospitals and ICUs in Sao Paulo, he said they have already tripled the number of ICU beds and will open 12 field hospitals across the state this month.
Regarding vaccinations, the governor said 90% of the vaccines in Brazil are produced by the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo – affiliated with the Sao Paulo government – and they will have made 100 million vaccines available across the country by the end of August. . “It’s still not enough,” he said, adding that the federal government started buying vaccines in March, while the state of Sao Paulo started last April.
The second wave of Covid-19 sweeps through Brazil pushing hospitals and ICUs to collapse and claiming record numbers of daily deaths.
As a new variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country, many Brazilians continue to defy the mobility restrictions of masks, along the lines of President Jair Bolsonaro, who recently said people should “ stop being sissy ” and “ whine ” about it. virus.
According to the Ministry of Health, Brazil has reported a total of 11,998,233 Covid-19 cases and 294,042 Covid-19-related deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Read more about the situation in Brazil: No vaccines, no leadership, no end in sight. How Brazil Became a Global Threat