Bolsonaro turns himself into live test case for hydroxychloroquine
AFTER months of touting an unproven anti-malaria drug as a treatment for the coronavirus, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has turned himself into a test case live before millions of people by swallowing hydroxychloroquine pills on social media and encouraging others to do the same.
Mr Bolsonaro said this week that he tested positive for the virus but already felt better thanks to hydroxychloroquine.
Hours later he shared a video of himself gulping down what he said was his third dose.
“I trust hydroxychloroquine,” he said, smiling. “And you?”
On Wednesday, he was again extolling the drug’s benefits on Facebook, and claimed that his political opponents were rooting against it.
A string of studies in Britain and the United States, as well as by the World Health Organisation, have found chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine ineffective against Covid-19 and sometimes deadly because of their adverse side effects on the heart. Several studies were cancelled early because of adverse effects.
US President Donald Trump has promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, but chloroquine – a more toxic version of the drug, produced in Brazil – has been even more enthusiastically promoted by Mr Bolsonaro, who contends the virus is largely unavoidable and not a serious medical problem.
“He has become the poster boy for curing Covid with hydroxychloroquine,” said Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia. “Chloroquine composes part of the denialist’s political strategy, with the objective of convincing voters that the pandemic’s effects can be easily controlled.”
Mr Trump first mentioned hydroxychloroquine on March 19. Two days later, Mr Bolsonaro announced he was directing the Brazilian army to ramp up output of chloroquine.
The army churned out more than two million pills – 18 times the country’s normal annual production – even as Brazil’s intensive care medicine association recommended it not be prescribed.
The White House on May 31 said it had donated two million hydroxychloroquine pills to Brazil. Two weeks later the US Food & Drug Administration revoked authorisation for its emergency use.
Meanwhile, stocks of medications used in intensive care ran out in three states, according to Brazil’s council of state health secretariats.