Again, Brazilian President Bolsonaro Disagrees With Health Minister

Illustration of the handling of COVID-19 in Brazil. (Wikimedia Commons/Alice Mafra)

JAKARTA - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said his country's health minister was preparing a plan regarding a policy to allow people who have been vaccinated to no longer wear masks.

Bolsonaro, who has opposed lockdowns and social distancing from the start, even though Brazil is among the top three countries infected with the coronavirus, made this point in a speech on Thursday local time.

"They are useful for people who are infected. Quarantine is for those who are infected," he said.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said President Bolsonaro had asked him to learn about the use of masks in Brazil.

Instead of removing masks, Queiroga testified before the Senate Commission of Inquiry that masks should be used to prevent transmission. Not only that, he also denied President Bolsonaro about hydroxychloroquine, saying there was no evidence the anti-malarial drug was effective in treating COVID-19 patients.

In a weekly web broadcast to his supporters, President Bolsonaro defended the use of chloroquine and said it had helped reduce deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil, which he said had been overreported to include deaths caused by other diseases.

Launching Worldometers, as of Friday June 11, Brazil was ranked the third country with cases of COVID-19 infection in the world, where there were a total of 17,215,159 cases of COVID-19 infection. However, from the death toll Brazil ranks second after the United States with 481,135 deaths.

The Brazilian Senate has also launched an investigation into the slow pace of the vaccination program in Brazil, whether President Bolsonaro has deliberately delayed securing a timely supply of the COVID-19 vaccine.

For information, during the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the position of minister of health has been held by four different people. The difference in the strategy for handling COVID-19 with President Bolsonaro is one of the causes.

Data from the Brazilian Ministry of Health noted that only 23.6 percent of the population of the country of Samba had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. And, only about 10.2 percent of the population has received the full two-dose vaccination.