“We are in one of those tragic moments in history where millions pay a high price for having an unprepared psychopathic leader at the head of a nation,” Joao Doria said in an interview with CNN on Monday.
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.
The governor added that he faced the biggest challenge of his life as governor of Brazil’s largest state and that he had to restructure the health care system in “record time” and look for ways to mitigate the economic crisis that affected the country during the pandemic. .
Doria also spoke about the serious condition of hospitals and ICUs in Sao Paulo, and said they had already tripled the number of beds for ICUs and that this month they would open 12 field hospitals in the state.
The Covid-19 crisis in Brazil has never been worse.
Nearly all Brazilian states have an ICU occupancy of 80% or more, according to a recent analysis of CNN state data. As of Friday, 16 of the 26 states had 90% or more, meaning these health systems have fallen or are at imminent risk of doing so.
And as of Friday, less than 10 million people in the country, about 220 million, had received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to federal health data. Only 1.57% of the population had been completely vaccinated.
This is the result of a slow deployment program that has been affected by delays. During the announcement of its distribution plan in early February, the government promised about 46 million doses of vaccine that would be available in March. It has been repeatedly forced to reduce that number and now it is only estimated that there will be 26 million doses available by the end of the month.
Doria said 90% of vaccines in Brazil were produced by the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo (linked to the Sao Paulo government) and that by the end of August they will have delivered 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.
CNN’s Matt Rivers contributed to this report.