The governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Joao Doria, described Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a “psychopathic leader” and criticized the president’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in an interview with Julia Chatterley of CNN Monday.
“We’re in one of those tragic times in history where millions pay a high price for having an unprepared psychopathic leader at the head of a nation,” he told CNN’s First Move.
Doria said much of the virus’s deaths in Brazil could have been prevented if Bolsonaro had “acted with the responsibility that the position gives him.” He added that Bolsonaro made “incredible mistakes, the most important thing was to have a political dispute with the governors trying to protect the population.”
Bolsonaro has repeatedly opposed blockades and restrictive measures and has criticized governors and mayors for enforcing them. He has also been seen greeting crowds of his followers during the pandemic without wearing a mask and has defended drugs such as hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus, a drug that has no proven effectiveness in fighting Covid-19.
The governor went on to say that he faces the biggest challenge of his life as governor of Brazil’s most populous state and that he had to restructure the health care system in “record time” and look for ways to mitigate the crisis. economic situation that affected the country. during the pandemic. He spoke about the seriousness of the state of hospitals and ICUs in Sao Paulo, and said that they have already tripled the number of ICU beds and that this month they will open 12 field hospitals in the state.
As for vaccinations, the governor said that 90% of vaccines in Brazil are produced by the Butantan Institute of Sao Paulo (linked to the government of Sao Paulo) and that by the end of August they will have put 100 million vaccines nationwide. . “It’s still not enough,” he said, adding that the federal government in March began buying vaccines while the state of Sao Paulo began in April last year.
The second wave of Covid-19 is kicking off Brazil, pushing hospitals and ICUs to collapse and claiming a record number of deaths daily.
Although a new variant of coronavirus is spreading across the country, many Brazilians continue to challenge the mandatory mobility restrictions of masks following the example of President Jair Bolsonaro, who recently said that people should “stop being sissies ”and“ complain ”about the virus.
According to the country’s health ministry, Brazil has reported a total of 11,998,233 cases of Covid-19 and 294,042 deaths related to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Read more about the situation in Brazil: No vaccines, no leadership, no goals in sight. How Brazil became a global threat