Brazil’s Sao Paulo state Gov. Joao Doria called Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro a “psychopathic leader” and criticized the president’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in an interview with CNN’s Julia Chatterley on Monday.
“We are in one of those tragic moments in history when millions of people pay a high price for having an unprepared and psychopathic leader in charge of a nation,” he said on CNN’s First Move.
Doria said much of the deaths from the virus in Brazil could have been avoided if Bolsonaro had “acted with the responsibility that the position gives him.” He added that Bolsonaro made “unbelievable mistakes, the biggest one was having a political dispute with the governors who are trying to protect the population.”
Bolsonaro has repeatedly opposed lockdowns and restrictive measures and has criticized governors and mayors for implementing them. He has also been seen greeting crowds of his supporters during the pandemic, without wearing a mask, and has advocated for drugs like hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus- a drug which has no proven effectiveness in combatting Covid-19.
The governor went on to say that he is facing the biggest challenge of his life as governor of Brazil’s most populous state and that he had to restructure the healthcare system in “record time” and look for ways to mitigate the economic crisis that hit the country during the pandemic. He spoke about the gravity of the state of hospitals and ICUs in Sao Paulo, saying they have already tripled the number of ICU beds and this month will open 12 field hospitals in the state.
On vaccinations, the governor said of 90% of the vaccines in Brazil are produced by the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo — linked to the Sao Paulo government — and that by the end of August, they will have made 100 million vaccines available across the country. “It is still not enough,” he said, adding that the federal government in March started buying vaccines while Sao Paulo state began in April of last year.
The second wave of Covid-19 is ripping through Brazil, pushing hospitals and ICUs toward collapse and claiming record numbers of daily deaths.
While a new variant of the coronavirus spreads throughout the country, many Brazilians continue to defy mask mandates mobility restrictions following the example of President Jair Bolsonaro, who recently said people need to “stop being sissies” and “whining” about the virus.
Brazil has reported a total of 11,998,233 Covid-19 cases and 294,042 Covid-19 related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the country’s health ministry.
Read more about the situation in Brazil: No vaccines, no leadership, no end in sight. How Brazil became a global threat