First major Brazil cities resume class
President won’t say if he’s having virus signs
DUQUE DE CAXIAS, Brazil — On a day when Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said he will be tested for COVID-19 after having an X-ray of his lungs, the Brazilian cities of Manaus in the Amazon rainforest and Duque de Caxias in Rio de Janeiro’s metropolitan region resumed in-person classes at private schools, the first large cities to do so since the onset of the pandemic.
Bolsonaro didn’t say Monday whether he was showing symptoms of the new coronavirus.
Brazil’s Supreme Court published documents in May showing that Bolsonaro tested negative three times in March after meeting with President Donald Trump in Florida. The Brazilian leader hasn’t said whether he took any additional tests for the disease since.
Both Manaus and Duque de Caxias have been hard hit by the virus. Amazonas state’s capital with 2.2 million residents had the sixthmost coronavirus deaths in the country, according to local media
G1. Duque de Caxias is home to 920,000 people and has confirmed the third-most deaths in Rio state.
The cities’ private schools received authorization to reopen from Amazonas state’s governor and Duque de Caxias’ mayor, according to the nation’s private school federation, Fenep.
Public schools in the two cities, as elsewhere, have yet to reopen.
Bolsonaro has pushed for economies to kick into gear, often over objections from public health experts who argue infection rates remain high. Many people, likewise, are eager to get back to work.
“We saw the need, the parents requested it; they were going back to the labor market,” said Maria Agostinho, 55, who directs the Happy Little Bear, a day care, nursery school and pre-school in Duque de Caxias.
The school tested all teachers for COVID-19, and on Monday made hand sanitizer available at the school’s entrance and took the temperatures of all its kids. They wear masks and must keep their distance from one another.
In other developments:
More than 200 scientists have called for the World Health Organization and others to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread in the air — a change that could alter some of the current measures being taken to stop the pandemic. In a statement on Monday, the U.N. health agency said it was aware of the article and was reviewing it with technical experts. The letter was endorsed by 239 scientists from a variety of fields. It stated that the issue of whether COVID-19 was airborne was of “heightened significance” as many countries stop restrictive lockdown measures.
Australian authorities were preparing to close the border between the country’s two largest states, as the country’s second-largest city, Melbourne, recorded two deaths and its highest-ever daily increase in infections on Monday. The border between the states of New South Wales, home to Sydney, and Victoria, home to Melbourne, is due to be shut late Tuesday.
The British government has announced almost $2 billion to help the country’s renowned arts and cultural institutions recover from the coronavirus pandemic, after some theaters and music venues warned that without support they might never open again.