COVID-19 hits dozens of Latin leaders
HAVANA — The COVID19 pandemic is sweeping through the leadership of Latin America, with two more presidents and powerful officials testing positive this week for the novel coronavirus, adding a destabilizing new element to the region’s public health and economic crises.
In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, 65, announced his illness Tuesday and is using it to publicly extol hydroxychloroquine, the unproven malaria drug that he’s been promoting as a treatment for COVID-19 and now takes himself.
Bolivian interim President Jeanine Añez, 53, made her own diagnosis public Thursday, throwing her already troubled political prospects into further doubt.
And in Venezuela, 57year-old socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said Thursday on Twitter that he, too, had tested positive, at least temporarily sidelining a larger-than-life figure considered the second-mostpowerful person in the country.
Another powerful figure, Venezuela’s oil Minister Tarek El Aissami, announced Friday he has the virus.
An Associated Press review of official statements from public officials across Latin America found at least 42 confirmed cases of new coronavirus in leaders ranging from presidents to mayors of major cities, along with dozens, likely hundreds, of officials from smaller cities and towns. In most cases, high-ranking officials recovered and are back at work. But several are still struggling with the disease.
Many leaders have used their diagnoses to call on the public to heighten precautions like social distancing and mask wearing. But like Mr. Bolsonaro, some have drawn attention to unproven treatments with potentially harmful side effects.
El Salvador’s interior minister, Mario Durán, was diagnosed on July 5, becoming the second cabinet member there to fall ill.
“I am asking you, now more than ever, to stay home and take all preventine measures,’’ he said after his diagnosis. “Protect your families.’’
Mr. Durán was receiving treatment at home on Friday.
Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández announced June 16 that he and his wife had tested positive, along with two other people who worked closely with the couple.
The following day the 51year-old Mr. Hernández was hospitalized after doctors determined he had pneumonia. The president’s illness came as the pandemic spread from an early epicenter in the northern city of San Pedro Sula to the capital of Tegucigalpa, where cases surged.
Mr. Hernández said he had started what he called the “MAIZ treatment,” an experimental and unproven combination of microdacyn, azithromycin, ivermectin and zinc that his government is promoting as an affordable way of attacking the disease. He was released from the hospital July 2.