The announcement had been expected for several days given the number of clashes between the pair and their seemingly incompatible outlooks.
Brazil's Presdident Jair Bolsonaro (Photo: AFP)
Brazil Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta on Thursday said that he has been sacked by President Jair Bolsonaro, after weeks of clashes between the two over the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Taking to Twitter, Mandetta said, “I just heard from President Jair Bolsonaro the notice of my resignation from the Ministry of Health”.
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Acabo de ouvir do presidente Jair Bolsonaro o aviso da minha demissão do Ministério da Saúde.
Quero agradecer a oportunidade que me foi dada, de ser gerente do nosso SUS, de pôr de pé o projeto de melhoria da saúde dos brasileiros eAdvertisement
— Henrique Mandetta (@lhmandetta) April 16, 2020
Mandetta made the announcement after meeting with Bolsonaro at the presidential palace in the capital Brasilia.
“I want to thank the opportunity given me to manage our SUS (Single Health System), to launch the project to improve the health of Brazilians and to plan how to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, the great challenge facing our health system,” Mandetta further posted.
Mandetta promoted isolation as a tool to contain the spread of the virus, the threat of which Bolsonaro repeatedly claimed was overblown.
The announcement had been expected for several days given the number of clashes between the pair and their seemingly incompatible outlooks.
Soon after the announcement, people in several towns banged pots and pans to protest the minister’s sacking.
Brazil, the largest country in South America with a population of 210 million, has recorded close to 2,000 deaths and more than 30,000 coronavirus cases.
Authorities predict the peak of the outbreak in Brazil will come at the end of April or beginning of May.
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, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the world topped 2 million Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with more than 143,000 confirmed deaths as of Thursday night
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