The Brazilian Chief of Staff admitted he was vaccinated …

Brazil’s chief of staff, retired General Luiz Eduardo Ramos, has confessed to secretly receiving the coronavirus vaccine from Jair Bolsonaro, who, despite being over 65, refuses to be vaccinated. In the audio leaked at a Health Council meeting, Ramos said that tries to convince the far-right president to get vaccinated because “his life is in danger”. At the same meeting, the Minister of the Economy, Paulo Guedes, called the coronavirus a “Chinese virus” and criticized the CoronaVac vaccine, the one most widely applied in Brazil. With the impact of new varieties as a backdrop, The sharp increase in deaths of pregnant women by covid-19 worries the authorities.

“I gave myself the hidden vaccine, I had another orientation. Like any human being, I want to live ”, warned Ramos. “I’m not ashamed, no. I want to be honest. If science and medicine say I should give myself the vaccine, who am I to oppose it?” .

Ramos also admitted that he was trying to convince Bolsonaro to follow in his footsteps. “We cannot lose the president to the virus. His life is in danger”he added according to the leak. Bolsonaro has said on at least two occasions that he has no plans to get the vaccine now and that he will be “last in line”. The president had coronavirus in mid-2020 and then defended the use of remedies not recommended by science like the antimalarial chloroquine.

Friend of Bolsonaro, Ramos caused a stir with his statements just as President and cabinet under investigation by Senate committee, which has 90 days to designate those responsible for Brazil’s health crisis. The committee’s rapporteur, Renan Calheiros, of the Movement for Brazilian Democracy (MDB) and a programmatic ally of opposition leader Luiz Inácio Lula da SIlva, said “there are those who should be held accountable”.

“Crimes against humanity are imprescriptible,” Calheiros said without directly naming Bolsonaro in the commission set up on Tuesday, in which the opposition is in the majority and which has already summoned the four Bolivian health ministers to declare themselves. Calheiros He cited the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, one of the “examples” claimed by Minister Paulo Guedes, and that of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, convicted of genocide.

Guedes insists on “Chinese virus”

Minister of Economy Guedes, which changed part of its technical cabinet after the approval of the budget with adjustments in the areas of health, education and the environment, he claimed at the same meeting where Ramos secretly confirmed his vaccination, that the coronavirus was “invented” in China, Brazil’s main trading partner since 2009.

Guedes, a liberal monetarist who graduated from the University of Chicago, also accused the Asian giant of making low-quality COVID-19 vaccines. “The Chinese invented the virus and their vaccine is less effective than the American one”, said at the Health Council meeting. “Americans have 100 years of research investment and guys are like, ‘What the virus? Is it? Okay, decode it. “There you have the Pfizer vaccine, it’s better than the others,” added the minister.

Chinese Embassy in Brazil quickly repudiated Guedes’ comments, just as he has done in the past with the children of Bolsonaro or of Trump’s former foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo. “China is the main supplier of vaccines and supplies to Brazil so far, which represent 95 percent of what Brazil receives and are sufficient to cover 60 percent of priority groups in the emergency phase, ”said Chinese Ambassador to Brasilia Yang Wanming.

Concern for pregnant women

Brazil, with nearly 400,000 deaths and 14.4 million coronavirus infections, continues with its health system on the brink of collapse, with much of the intensive care units overflowing and a lack of drugs to keep critically ill patients intubated. The situation has worsened even more with the spread of new variants of covid-19, which have already been found to be more contagious than the original strain and have led to a rapid escalation of the disease, especially in the younger population, which is, also, the one who gets pregnant the most.

In fact, the increase in deaths of pregnant women due to covid-19 is a fact that worries the Brazilian authorities. Between January and April of this year alone, at least 433 pregnant women or women who have recently given birth lost their lives to the coronavirus, compared to the 546 deaths recorded throughout last year, according to data released by the Ministry of Health.

In turn, a report from Brazilian Obstetric Observatory Covid-19, composed of researchers from three Brazilian universities, showed that the average weekly deaths increased by 62% this year in the general population, while in pregnant and postpartum women this growth was 186%. “Pregnant women who are infected with covid have a greater risk of developing poorly and needing intensive care, intubation, which also becomes a risk for pregnancy,” said professor and physician Rossana Pulcineli Vieira Francisco, one of the creators of the Observatory.

In the midst of the frantic advance of the pandemic, the health ministry recently recommended that Brazilian women, if possible, “delay pregnancy”. In addition, this week’s portfolio included pregnant and postpartum women in the priority group for immunization, considering that they “present a high obstetric risk regardless of their age”.