Brazil’s authorities want Bolsonaro to quarantine on UN trip

Brasilia, Sep 22 (EFE).- Brazilian health authorities Wednesday recommended that president Jair Bolsonaro go into quarantine along with the delegation that accompanied him during a trip to New York.

The recommendation by the country’s Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) came after Brazilian health minister Marcelo Queiroga, a member of Bolsonaro’s delegation, was put in isolation after he tested positive for Covid-19.

Queiroga, who has been fully inoculated, arrived in New York Sunday on the same flight as Bolsonaro and the 18 other members of the delegation but did not travel back to Brazil with the delegation on Tuesday evening as he will be quarantined for 14 days at a hotel in New York city.

The health minister took part in several official activities and attended a meeting with Bolsonaro and British prime minister Boris Johnson, as well as another meeting with Michelle Bachelet Jeria, the former Chilean president and the UN high commissioner for human rights.

In his speech at the UN general assembly, Bolsonaro, who has played down the coronavirus since the beginning, spoke out against Covid-19 containment measures such as the health pass and defended the preventive use of drugs whose effectiveness against the virus has not been proven.

Brazil is one of the world’s worst-hit countries by the virus, along with the United States and India, as it has registered 21.1 million cases and 591,000 linked deaths since the start of the pandemic.EFE

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