Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro warned that more restrictive social isolation measures would break the country and said there wouldn’t be enough money to pay public sector workers.
This story about lockdown, closing everything, that is not the path,” he told journalists gathered outside the presidential residence, “That is the path to failure, to breaking Brazil,” reports CNN.
This comes one day after Brazil reported a record number of new confirmed coronavirus cases.
Bolsonaro said quarantine measures already introduced by many governors across the country were making the crisis worse. “Brazil is turning into a country of poor people.” He warned, “there won’t be enough money to pay public sector workers.”
On Wednesday evening, the Health Minister reported that the number of confirmed cases had risen 11,385 from the day before - a new record high for a day. Brazil’s total number of cases is now 192,081 and 13,276 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil has the 6th highest number of coronavirus cases in the world. It stands behind the US, Russia, UK, Spain, and Italy, according to Johns Hopkins University.