COVID-19: Brazil threatens to leave WHO
BRASILIA: President Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil threatened to leave the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday despite a worsening health situation, unlike Europe and the United States where the epidemic finally seems to be marking time.
“I tell you here, the United States left WHO, we are considering it in the future,” he told reporters in Brasilia. “Either WHO works without ideological bias, or we leave it too. We don’t need outsiders to give their feelings about health here.”
The South American giant is since Thursday the third country with the most deaths, with more than 34,000 deaths reported. A “time bomb”, according to an infectious disease doctor in Paraguay, who is on the border with Brazil. This country reaffirmed Friday to reopen its border with a state where “the situation is quite chaotic”, according to its director of health monitoring.
Further north, US President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States had “largely overcome” the crisis, based on good employment figures.
Commenting on unemployment figures in May (13.3%, while the most pessimistic feared almost 20%), Donald Trump praised the “strength” of the US economy. “This force has enabled us to overcome this horrible pandemic, we have largely overcome it,” he said during a press conference at the White House.
In California, for example, film and television filming may resume from June 12.
The same optimism in Europe where life is taking its rights. Before Ireland on Monday, the lifting of restrictions imposed by the coronavirus continues on Saturday in France, where the epidemic is now “controlled”, according to health authorities. An emblematic place in the country and one of the most visited in the world, the Palace of Versailles, near Paris, reopens on Saturday after more than 82 days of confinement. With mandatory mask and limited number of visitors.
Less prestigious but just as emblematic, the Casino de Monaco also reopened its doors three months after its closure. “Aperto?”: The first customer to ask if it was open and to cross the entrance to the casino and its 28 Second Empire columns was an Italian. Elsewhere in Europe we also want to believe it, and measures of deconfinement are increasing. Ireland will therefore make relief on Monday, with the reopening of all businesses, except shopping centers, pending the end of travel restrictions on June 29.
Switzerland on its side decided on Friday to reopen its borders with all EU countries earlier than planned on June 15, a measure called for by Italy, whose border with its neighbor in the Alps was to remain closed at least until July 6.