Brazil may be getting a new health minister just as the coronavirus outbreak reaches a new peak in the country.
President Jair Bolsonaro spent Saturday in meetings with Lower House Speaker Arthur Lira and a handful of ministers to try to find a replacement for Eduardo Pazuello, according to four sources with close knowledge of the matter. The president is being pressured to replace him and find solutions to the explosion of the pandemic and the slow vaccination campaign, the sources said.
Pazuello has asked to step down due to personal health issues, O Globo newspaper reported earlier.
In the six months he’s been in charge, the pandemic has unrelentingly worsened in Latin America’s largest economy. His exit would come less than a week after Brazil surpassed the milestone of 2,000 Covid-19 deaths in a single day.
On Friday, Brazil passed India in the number of infections, retaking the post of the worst-hit country in the world after the U.S. The surge in cases came after year-end gatherings and clandestine Carnival parties, as well the emergence of a more contagious variant of the virus first detected in the city of Manaus.
Bolsonaro’s government is considering Ludhmilla Abrahao Hajjar and Marcelo Queiroga as two possible replacements, according to O Globo. The Health Ministry said Pazuello is holding the post at “the present moment.” The president’s office said in a phone message that Bolsonaro met with Hajjar this afternoon.
As the latest wave worsens, Brazilians face conflicting messages from state and federal officials. While governors imposed stricter measures to try to slow down the spread and avoid a collapse in the health system in their states, Bolsonaro has insisted that these social isolation measures are “overdone” and that the economic impact would be more devastating than the pandemic itself.
The government is being criticized for its sluggish vaccine rollout. A total of 12.9 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far, according to data collected by Bloomberg News and Johns Hopkins University. At the current rate, it will take almost two years to cover 75% of the population with a two-dose vaccine.
On Friday, Pazuello cut the forecast for vaccine doses to be delivered in March to a maximum of 25 million, from a previous estimate of 46 million. The country has also been slow to cut deals with Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen and Moderna Inc.
