Brazil lost its second health minister in a month on Friday after President Jair Bolsonaro demanded wider use of unproven anti-malarial drugs to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

Brazilians banged pots from windows and health experts reacted with outrage at the resignation of Nelson Teich, the second doctor to leave the top Health Ministry job as the outbreak explodes

Brazil’s confirmed cases climbed past Germany and France this week, growing at a daily pace second only to the United States.

Earlier on Thursday, Bolsonaro had demanded that Teich issue federal guidelines for the early use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, despite studies that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the malaria drug for COVID-19 and raised concerns it may cause heart problems.

In a video conference, the President said, “I was elected to make decisions. And the decision about chloroquine goes through me”.

In April, Bolsonaro sacked Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta after weeks of clashes between the two over the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mandetta made the announcement after meeting with Bolsonaro at the presidential palace in the capital Brasilia.

Military members of the Brazilian cabinet are pushing for interim health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general, to take over full-time, a government official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential talks

Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Walter Braga Netto, told media that Teich had left for “personal reasons” after a friendly conversation with Bolsonaro on Friday

The president “had a different vision about which protocol to follow,” Braga Netto said, without elaborating.Late on Friday, the Health Ministry said it was finalizing new guidelines for early treatment of coronavirus patients, including proposed medications

On Friday, the Health Ministry confirmed more than 15,000 new cases of the virus on Friday.

Brazil has confirmed more than 218,000 cases so far, on pace to pass Italy’s nearly 224,000 cases this weekend as it closes in quickly on Spain and the United Kingdom despite rolling out far fewer tests.

Brazil’s death toll has risen by more than 800 per day to nearly 15,000 on Friday, as the crisis overwhelms hospitals in several cities and public cemeteries resort to mass graves.

The right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro had been downplaying the risk of the virus outbreak in his country by asking people to return to normalcy.

Social distancing policies have been attacked by Bolsonaro, who accuses them of needlessly wrecking Latin America’s biggest economy over a disease the far-right president has compared to a “little flu.”

Meanwhile, globally, 4,628,356 people have been infected by coronavirus so far, and the total number of deaths from the disease now stands at 308,645.