Brazilian Interim Health Minister Gen. Pazuello to Sign Guidelines for Hydroxychloroquine as Treatment for COVID-19

As soon as Teich left office on Friday, an interim minister immediately took his place. Much like other officials in the current administration, the new proxy had a history of working in the military. Both the former ministers were trained doctors.

It is widely believed among the media that Teich was not able to fully do his job because of the lack of experts and the appointment of military personnel in the health ministry.

Former Health Minister Teich against hydroxychloroquine

Teich specified no particular reason for his resignation. On an interview, he merely said that life was "full of decisions". However, he frequently disagreed with Bolsonaro.

The president not only strongly opposed lockdown measures but also rallied with the conviction that the coronavirus was a myth designed by the media and China to bring him down. This was not the only thing they had arguments about.

Teich was careful to warn the public against misuse of hydroxychloroquine, which had ill side effects on top of being an experimental drug. A day before he resigned, Bolsonaro announced he would let healthcare institutions prescribe hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 patients.

Executive director of the national Institute for Health Policy Studies Miguel Lago claimed that during the few weeks Teich was Health Minister, he did not have his own team. Lago attributed this to certain limitations, such as Teich's lack of political connections and careful compliance to scientific recommendations.

Analyst from the risk consultancy Eurasia Group Filipe Gruppelli Carvalho said that the job of the Ministry of Health was as detrimental to responding to the pandemic as much as local authorities. He added that the capacity of the government to coordinate between states was gone as soon as Luiz Henrique Mandetta was fired.

Carvalho said that Teich's resignation would only magnify the increasing risks of Bolsonaro's poor response to the coronavirus, right from the outbreak up to the global spread. This would suggest his more sensible supporters would start to question his leadership.

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Hydroxychloroquine questionable

In an interview, Bolsonaro declared that Pazuello, still an active duty army general with no previous experience in the healthcare system, would sign the new hydroxychloroquine guidelines after the administration approved on Wednesday the anti-malarial drug as a treatment for COVID-19 patients.

Prior to this, the Health Ministry allowed the use of hydroxychloroquine for patients who were suffering from severe health conditions due to the coronavirus. Because of Bolsonaro's touting, Brazil's Army Chemical and Pharmaceutical Laboratory increased the production of hydroxychloroquine in late March.

In researches conducted the month prior, analysis have shown that use of the drug in U.S. hospitals for veterans raised no significant or definitive changes.

Similarly, scientists in Brazil halted a study of hydroxychloroquine last month when they observed heart rhythm problems in a quarter of the participants when given higher doses during drug tests.

As of Monday, Brazil has the third-highest number of positive cases of the coronavirus, following Russia and the United States.