translated from Spanish: Bag bag called “embarrassment” the commission investigating its handling of the Covid-19

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro called this Saturday the Senate-based commission investigating possible omissions by his government in the management of the coronavirus pandemic, which already leaves nearly 420,000 deaths in the country.” It’s an embarrassment, all we’re talking about is chloroquine. But the one that is the opposite offers no alternative. Did anyone already take here?” asked the ruler a group of followers, at the door of his official residence in Brasilia.Bolsonaro, advanced that he will record in the coming days a video with some of his ministers for this antimalarial drug, whose effectiveness against Covid-19 is not scientifically proven.” Let’s make a video with all those ministers who took hydroxychloroquine (derived from chloroquine) to say: I took it. It’s the alternative of the moment. ‘Ah, but it doesn’t have a scientific check,’ but there’s also nothing to say otherwise,” he justified. The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly spoken out about the ineffectiveness of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for the preventive treatment of covid-19 and even alerted to possible adverse effects when used for covid-19. However, Bolsonaro, which censors the use of masks and social isolation to combat the pandemic, has regularly promoted the administration of this medicine, which its government has distributed massively to Brazilian states. In this context, the president was interested in the parliamentary committee clarifying some cases of deaths recorded in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, linked to the application of a high dose of chloroquine.” Any over-medication can lead to death,” he warned. The controversy around chloroquine and other issues, such as the lack of vaccines, are under investigation in the Senate commission, where two former Health Ministers of Bolsonaro have already declared that they left the Government due to inconvenience with the ruler, and the current holder of the portfolio, Marcelo Queiroga.Both Luiz Henrique Mandetta, dismissed by Bolsonaro in April 2020 , like Nelson Teich, his successor and who resigned in May of that year, confirmed the pressures of the far-right leader to recommend chloroquine against covid-19 in the Brazilian public health system. After the departure of both, Army General Eduardo Pazuello assumed the ministry and one of his first decisions was precisely to release the use of chloroquine and recommend the so-called “early treatment”, discouraged by many specialists. Brazil is the second largest country in the world with the highest number of covid-19-associatedces, with nearly 420,000, and the third most infected, with more than 15 million, behind just the United States and India.

Original source in Spanish