Leader's infection puts spotlight on Brazil toll

US crosses milestone of 3 million cases as more states report record numbers

BRASILIA－Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, said in a television interview that he was in good health despite running a fever.

In the interview on state-run TV Brasil, Bolsonaro said he began feeling ill on Sunday and has been taking hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug with unproven effectiveness against COVID-19.

"There's no reason for fear. That's life," the president said, wearing a mask, outside his official residence.

Brazil has the world's second-largest outbreak behind the United States, with more than 1.6 million cases and 65,000 COVID-19 deaths. Globally, cases increased to more than 11.7 million on Wednesday, while deaths soared above 543,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University in the US.

Bolsonaro joins a short list of heads of government to become infected with the coronavirus, including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, both of whom were treated in hospital.

Bolsonaro's positive test looks set to spark a frantic period of contact tracing and further tests for those who met the politician in recent days, including Paulo Guedes, the economy minister, Luiz Carlos Trabuco, the chairman of Brazilian bank Bradesco and Francisco Gomes Neto, the CEO of plane-maker Embraer.

Over the weekend, Bolsonaro was in close contact with the US Ambassador to Brazil, Todd Chapman, for Fourth of July celebrations. Pictures showed neither wearing a mask.

The US embassy in Brasilia said the ambassador had lunch with Bolsonaro, five ministers and the president's son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman. The ambassador had no symptoms, but would undergo testing and is "taking precautions".

In a news conference, Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program, said: "We wish him (Bolsonaro) a full and speedy recovery from this disease."

Marcos Espinal, the Pan American Health Organization director for communicable diseases, echoed Ryan's sentiments, but said Bolsonaro's infection carried a message.

"The message is that this virus is unpredictable and does not respect race, class or people in power, despite security around any president," Espinal said.

"For Brazil, the infection of its president should reinforce the need to strengthen implementations of social distancing recommendations and the use of masks to mitigate the spread of coronavirus."

Shortage of equipment

In the US, the coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, with many states facing an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.

The trend has driven many more US citizens to seek out COVID-19 screenings. The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term "surge" testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, projected on Tuesday that US deaths would reach 208,000 by Nov 1, with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the fall.

A hoped-for summer decline in transmission of the virus never materialized, the IHME said.

"The US didn't experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic," the IHME's Director, Christopher Murray, said in a statement. "This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections."

Despite the surging cases, US President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting economy and urged citizens to return to their normal routines, pressured state governors to open schools in the fall.

Agencies - Xinhua