Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was diagnosed with coronavirus on July 7.
Braslia
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced Saturday that he tested negative for the new coronavirus more than two weeks after being diagnosed on July 7, attributing his recovery to an unproven antimalarial drug.
“RT-PCR for Sars-Cov 2: negative. Good morning everyone,” the 65-year-old tweeted, along with a photo of himself smiling and holding a pack of hydroxychloroquine, whose efficacy against COVID-19 has not been demonstrated. in clinical trials.
He did not say when he took the last test.
The president, who has routinely downplayed the virus he calls a “little flu” but is currently ravaging his country, spent nearly 20 days isolating himself at his official residence in the capital, Brasilia, the Alvorada Palace.
During that time, he underwent at least three more virus tests, all positive.
Three polls released this week showed that the leader named “Tropical Trump” would win reelection in 2020, despite his controversial handling of the virus crisis.
The pandemic has broken out in Brazil, the country with the most COVID-19 infections and deaths anywhere in the world, except the United States.
The Latin American power has registered almost 2.3 million cases of the new coronavirus and more than 84,000 deaths, and the numbers have continued to increase rapidly.
But Bolsonaro is a fierce critic of the stay-at-home measures, arguing that the economic pain they cause is worse than the virus itself.
The President appears to continue to circumvent the virus precautions even after his diagnosis.
On Thursday he was seen hanging around on his motorcycle and chatting without a mask with a team of gardeners outside the presidential palace.
The same day, he admitted in a live Facebook video that he felt “a little miserable about being jailed here.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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