President of Brazil Joins Protest Against Nation's Health Ministry
A report by the Brazilian health ministry said on Sunday that there had been 4,588 cases in the country and 275 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total confirmed cases in Brazil has reached 100,000.
Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has once again joined another demonstration in protest to the national health ministry's mitigation measures to prevent the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Joins Hally Against Health Ministry
This Sunday, Bolsonaro faced a crowd of a thousand of his supporters outside the palace in Brasilia. Yellow and green flags were raised in midair as he addressed all of them in defiance of the lockdown.
Bolsonaro said he was certain of one thing.
"We have the people on our side," he said, "And the armed forces are on the side of the people."
He went down and shook hands with Brazilians as the people in the crowd shouted their cheers for his far-right administration. Bolsonaro supporters assaulted a photographer working for the national press while he was documenting the mass protest.
Even people from the right-wing are lodging criticisms at Bolsonaro for the bold display of projecting strength at a time of economic and health crisis.
Diogo Mainardi, a conservative commentator, called the mob of Bolsonaro supporters the "death squad."
In an interview earlier this week, Bolsonaro told reporters that the coronavirus might infect 70% of Brazil's population. He said, "Nobody ever denied that there would be deaths."
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Mass Graves in Manaus
This Sunday, gravediggers buried 140 bodies in Manaus. They were diseased with COVID-19, deep in the isolated rainforest metropolis in the Amazon. The day prior, 98 bodies were buried. Residents fear for their lives.
Local maintenance man Gilson de Freitas was enraged as he watched them bury his mother alongside over 130 others last Tuesday. He said, "They were just dumped there like dogs."
Authorities report that they are preparing to lay the ground up to 4,500 people in the following month. Morticians tell the public that they cannot guarantee to provide any more wooden coffins this week.
Hospitals bring in more than 100 patients each day, overwhelming the local government. The officials have started performing burials at night, people in cemeteries have begun carving out mass graves where the dead were stacked on top of each other, and patients in hospitals are wrapped in body bags right in the hallways.
Experts in the city explain the factors that have contributed to the death count and fatality rate of Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon. Firstly, the rainy season has only started to peter out, and so health centers were already packed with patients.
Secondly, the pandemic has only magnified pre-existing issues in the healthcare facilities in Manaus, which are chronically underfunded and understaffed, resulting in insufficient supplies and equipment. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, they cited the government's failure to implement mitigation and prevention measures during the pandemic.
Only time will be able to tell how Manaus can manage to survive the pandemic. Freitas explained they could barely figure out how to survive the week.
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