Bolsonaro contaminated, Washington leaves the WHO

The president of the brazilian Jair Bolsonaro announced to be positive at the COVID-19.

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7 July 2020 11: 38 am

Updated at 21: 45

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Bolsonaro contaminated, Washington leaves the WHO

Agence France-Presse

RIO DE JANEIRO — brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, the more outrageously “corona-the skeptic” of global leaders, said Tuesday that he had tested positive to the COVID-19, at the same time that Donald Trump has officially launched the procedure for the withdrawal of the United States of the world Health Organization (WHO).

At the same time, the WHO has warned of an acceleration of the epidemic and the likely ability of the virus to be transmitted by air, is much more contagious than originally envisaged.

The government of Donald Trump, the other leader known to minimize the severity of the epidemic in his country, confirmed that it had notified its withdrawal from the WHO he had accused of having been slow to respond after the appearance of the virus in China in December in order to accommodate Beijing.

In the immediate future, it is Jair Bolsonaro, 65 years of age, who has had to bring himself to reveal that he had been contaminated. Despite a balance sheet of more than 66 000 dead, he has not stopped to minimize the ravages made by the virus in his country. “The positive result [of the test] has just arrived”, he said to the television.

“The doctors have given me hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (an antibiotic) and after I felt better. I am perfectly well,” he said, referring to the first medicine to be topic of so many debates, a time adopted by Donald Trump, but WHO has come to the conclusion that it had no beneficial effect.

Almost at the same time, in Geneva, the WHO launched a new alarm signal : the epidemic of COVID-19 “is accelerating”, said 400,000 new cases during the last weekend, and “we have not reached the peak”.

“In reality, some countries have made significant progress in reducing the number of deaths, while in other countries, deaths are still increasing,” explained the director-general of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

More than three million cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Latin America and the Caribbean since the beginning of the epidemic, more than half in Brazil, according to a balance sheet prepared on Tuesday by AFP from official sources.

The pandemic has killed at least 539 620 people in the world.

By air

Worse, the organization admitted that more and more evidence to prove that the virus was transmitted not only by projection of droplets or contact, but also through the air, suspended in the air, after a group of 239 international scientists warned on Monday of this mode of contagion.

“We recognise that evidence is emerging in this field,” said Benedetta Allegranzi, a WHO official is on the. “The possibility of transmission by air in public places, particularly crowded, can not be ruled out”, she added, stressing, however, that the evidence had yet to be “collected and interpreted”.

Because if the situation seems to be under control in Europe, the continent hardest hit by the virus that has claimed more than 200,000 lives — more than two-thirds in the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain — the concern is growing, especially in Australia where the reconfinement of Melbourne (south-east) will last at least six weeks.

“Up to the knees”

On their side the United States, the country most affected by the pandemic, continue to break records of contamination with 60,000 new cases for the one day Tuesday, according to the Johns Hopkins university. More than 1100 people died as a result of the COVID-19 during the past 24 hours.

The director of the american Institute of infectious diseases, Anthony Fauci, said that his country was still pushed up to his knees” in the pandemic. According to him, it is necessary to act immediately to halt the current outbreak, particularly in the west and the south of the country.

Donald Trump believes, on the contrary, to have made “good work” and affirmed that the country is “in good position”. His government announced on Tuesday granted US $1.6 billion to the biotech american Novavax for its project of vaccine, ensuring that where appropriate the United States the priority of the 100 million first doses.

Explosion in India

The number of infections is exploding in India, the third country in the world in number of reported cases, and which has passed on Tuesday in the bar of the 20, 000 deaths, with an outbreak particularly virulent in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

In Kenya, primary and secondary schools do will re-open in January 2021, announced Tuesday the minister of Education. As far as Iran, it reported Tuesday a record number of 200 deaths on Tuesday.

China, for its part, announced Tuesday that no new patient had been registered in the past 24 hours in Beijing for the first time since a rebound of the epidemic last month.

Shrinking GDP

Europe is still worried about a resurgence of cases, leading to the establishment of new local restrictions. In Spain, the health authorities say they are “very concerned” by the resumption of the epidemic in a region of 200 000 inhabitants in Catalonia (north-east), subjected to measures of isolation Saturday, similar to the other coastal region in Galicia (north-west).

On the economic front, the impact of the health crisis on the GDP of the euro zone will be worse than expected : – 8.7% in 2020, warned Tuesday the european Commission.

The african development Bank (AFDB) has estimated in a report on Tuesday that nearly 50 million Africans could be forced into extreme poverty because of the economic consequences of the epidemic on the continent.

Le Soleil