[ad_1]
Sources close to the Health Ministry told local media that the move was given by right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro. In Brazil, one of the countries most seriously affected by the coronavirus, the decision has been widely resented. Brazil beat Italy in deaths and Russia and the United Kingdom in deaths.
“An authoritarian, insensitive, inhuman and unethical attempt to make COVID-19 invisible will not burn. We and Brazilian society will not forget them or the tragedy that happened in the country,” said Alberto Beltrame, president of the National Council of Secretaries of Health of the State of Brazil, in a statement.
As theguardian.com reminds us, Brazil currently ranks second in terms of coronavirus cases. According to Johns Hopkins University, 691,962 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the country. Brazil surpassed Italy in the number of deaths from COVID-19, with 36,455 deaths from the coronavirus. On Saturday, Johns Hopkins University removed Brazil from the overall data count, but then restored the data.
On Friday night, the Brazilian government stopped publishing all the accumulated data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and the number of deaths, as has been the case daily so far, and has started to publish only individual daily data. The page of the Ministry of Health has become inaccessible. It was operational again on Saturday, but the total number of confirmed cases and deaths was no longer there. There was no longer information about the cases investigated and the people who had recovered. The number of deaths reported Thursday was 1,473, 1005 on Friday and 904 on Saturday.
Jair Bolsonaro
This decision not to provide aggregated data has been strongly criticized by Brazilian society. Doctors, medical organizations and state governors called the move an attempt to control the information. On Saturday, federal prosecutors announced the investigation and gave the acting health minister 72 hours to explain the decision as a justification under the Brazilian constitution and a law guaranteeing the right to information.
“Manipulation statistics are a maneuver used by totalitarian regimes. This trick will not release us from responsibility for the genocide that will eventually attack,” Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes wrote on Twitter.
Rodrigo Maia, president of the lower house of Congress, asked that the data be modified “for reasons of transparency.”
“Without science, transparency and effective action, the pandemic will not be overcome,” Paulo Camara, governor of the state of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil, told Instagram.
“Manipulation, neglect and disrespect are what authoritarian administrations are all about. However, this will not frustrate efforts across the country. We will continue to collect, systematize and publish data,” added Camara.
Action to monitor the COVID-19 data began last week. On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health withdrew the announcement of the information, generally daily after the afternoon television news from 7pm to 10pm. “The Jornal Nacional reports on the subject are coming to an end,” Bolsonaro said Friday, referring to Brazil’s largest television news program.
The data has been “redesigned” because “it does not reflect the current situation in the country,” the Brazilian president wrote on Twitter. Bolsonaro has shown that he is in control of the situation, minimizing the severity of the coronavirus and calling it a “mild flu”, and seeing that the increasing number of deaths in Brazil is insignificant because he says that death is “a destination for everyone.”
The country does not currently have a permanent health minister: Brazil has lost two ministers since the pandemic began. Acting Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello is an army general with no medical care experience and has brought many officers to the ministry.
It is strictly prohibited to use the information published by DELFI on other websites, in the media or elsewhere, or to distribute our material in any way without consent, and if consent has been obtained, DELFI must be cited as the source.
[ad_2]
