Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, for the first time this Thursday withdrew on the benefits he has repeatedly promoted from chloroquine, accepted that the drug could have ‘zero’ efficacy against COVID, and said, ‘At least I didn’t kill anyone’ . .
The far-right leader, who was a staunch defender of the use of chloroquine and even took it when he caught the covid last July, accepted that it might be a placebo.
“Maybe they say beforehand that the option (for chloroquine) is zero, that it’s a placebo. All right, patience, excuse me, goodbye, at least I didn’t kill anyone,” he said during the live speech he delivered weekly. on Thursday on social media.
Since the pandemic hit Brazil in March last year, Bolsonaro has recommended the use of hydroxychloroquine countless times to combat covid, a controversial antimalarial drug whose effectiveness has not been fully proven by science.
His defense of chloroquine also cost him the jobs of two of his health ministers who found it insufficient in the fight against the virus.
The president’s obsession with chloroquine was such that he ordered mass production and the antimalarial drug is part of a group of drugs that the Department of Health has determined is applied to coronavirus patients as part of what that office and Bolsonaro himself qualify as’ early treatment “.
According to official data, the government has already spent more than 100 million reais (about $ 20 million) on both hydroxychloroquine and other drugs whose effectiveness against the coronavirus is questioning much of the scientific community.
Last week, the State Court of Accounts, the body that oversees government spending in Brazil, asked the government for an explanation of those spending.
Judge Benjamín Zymler, a member of the Court, made a well-founded request, among other things, that the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) should not approve the use of these drugs against covid-19.