RÍO DE JANEIRO, Brazil .- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday that the situation of “war” in Brazil, the third country most affected by COVID-19, justifies the decision of his government to authorize the use of a scientifically proven ineffective medicine to treat all sufferers.
“There is still no scientific proof, but it is being experimented and used in Brazil and around the world. Anyway: we are at war, in which” worse than being defeated is the shame of not having fought. “God bless Brazil “the far-right leader said in a message posted on his Twitter account.
The Ministry of Health published this Wednesday a new protocol on the treatment for patients with COVID-19 that extends the possible use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, two medicines with no proven efficacy and serious side effects, to all patients, including those with the first symptoms.
The protocol admits that the efficacy of the two antimalarials to treat COVID-19 has not yet been proven and that the two medicines have serious side effects, such as cardiac arrhythmia, which determines that they can only be prescribed by doctors and by patients who sign a document in which they recognize that their situation may be aggravated.
Chloroquine was already used in Brazil for seriously ill, hospitalized and under medical observation, in case it is necessary to suspend treatment for a cardiac arrhythmia, but Bolsonaro has been pushing since last week for it to be extended to all cases, even the least severe.
Such insistence caused the resignation last Friday of his Health Minister, Nelson Teich, who only held the post 28 days after the dismissal of Luiz Henrique Mandetta, also withdrawn due to his disagreements with the far-right leader on strategies to combat COVID-19. in Brazil.
The new protocol was published a day after the Brazilian Intensive Medicine Association, the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases and the Brazilian Society of Pulmonology advised against the use of chloroquine.
According to former Health Minister Luis Henrique Mandetta, Bolsonaro’s insistence on forcing the use of chloroquine to treat all patients can lead to many deaths because it is a medicine with serious side effects.
Mandetta stated that Bolsonaro’s intention with his commitment to chloroquine is for people to think that they can return to work because a remedy already exists.
The far-right leader is one of the most skeptical rulers about the severity of the pandemic, has come to call COVID-19 a “flu” and insists on criticizing the social distancing measures adopted by regional governments to curb the pandemic and calling for standardization of activities.
Brazil, which since Monday is the third country with the most cases of COVID-19 in the world, registered on Tuesday a daily record of 1,179 deaths -which for the first time exceeded the thousandth bar-, which raised the number of victims to 17,971 in two months.
The South American giant adds 271,628 infections, making it the third most affected in the world, after the United States and Russia.
But the forecast is that Brazil will rise to second place in a few days since the numbers tend to rise in the country, with 210 million inhabitants, serious inequalities and a health system with deficiencies, while in most European countries the curves are already descending.
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