Brazil general named health minister after months as interim

Brazil general named health minister after months as interim

SeattlePI.com

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SAO PAULO (AP) — Gen. Eduardo Pazuello on Wednesday became Brazil’s third health minister during the coronavirus pandemic, after nearly four months holding the position on an interim basis and almost 120,000 COVID-19 deaths during that time.

Pazuello, a logistics expert with no prior health experience before taking a deputy position in May, follows two predecessors who departed after disagreements with President Jair Bolsonaro regarding proper means to combat the new coronavirus.

“I am neither arriving nor leaving,” Pazuello joked at a ceremony at Brazil’s presidential palace in Brasilia. “This is an unprecedented situation.”

Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the risks of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, attended the ceremony and once again touted an anti-malarial drug as a cure for the disease while blaming mayors and governors for limiting activities; those two stances are what prompted the exits of his prior health ministers.

The South American country had confirmed just over 15,000 deaths from COVID-19 when Gen. Pazuello took over as interim minister, and in the three following months recorded an average 1,000 deaths per day. That trend has dipped downward in recent weeks. The total death toll has surpassed 134,000, the second highest in the world after the U.S.

“We managed to reach a well-defined situation of stability,” the newly-inducted minister said Wednesday. “We had to change the tires of the car as it went by.”

There are several reasons Brazil’s number of cases and deaths remained at a high plateau for so long. First, Brazil has a large population, with about 210 million people, and a vast territory roughly the size of the contiguous U.S. states. That means the virus first barreled through the southeast and northern regions and, after ebbing in those areas, began pummeling...

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