Omicron variant, Bolsonaro minimizes: “She is welcome”

Jair Bolsonaro plays down the impact of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in Brazil and refers to it as “welcome”. “Omicron has already spread all over the world”, said the Brazilian president, quoting “those who really know” and adding that it has “a very large diffusion capacity, but a very small lethality”. In an interview with ‘Gazeta Brasil’ he claimed that Omicron “did not kill anyone” in Brazil and that the case of the death of an infected person in the state of Goiás relates to a 68-year-old patient who already suffered from “very serious problems” , hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “According to some scholars, serious people and – he pressed, as reported by Uol – not linked to pharmaceutical companies”, the variant “is welcome” and could “mark the end of the pandemic”. Bolsonaro, who in the past has questioned the effectiveness of anti-Covid vaccines, also announced that he had ordered the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, to release data on side effects. And in the interview he returned to criticize the vaccination campaign aimed at children, which will begin in Brazil at the end of the month. “Almost zero, a very low number” of children have died from Covid-19 in Brazil, he argued. “And this low number – he said – is comorbid”. In the last 24 hours, more than 70,700 new coronavirus cases have been reported by the Ministry of Health with 174 deaths. In Brazil, with a population of over 210 million people, a total of over 22.6 million infections with more than 621,000 deaths have so far been confirmed.