“I wanted to watch the Santos game now, and they told me I needed to be vaccinated. Why?”
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is not giving up football matches in his own country because he has not been vaccinated against COVID-19, Reuters reported.
On Sunday, Santos dramatically beat Gremio 1-0 with a goal in added time in a match of the elite football division in the first championship of Brazil Serie A.
It will be initially a home game published by Santos – a team from the eponymous city in the southern state of Sao Paulo – since the beginning of the pandemic.
Only spectators who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or present a negative PCR for the new coronavirus that causes this infectious treatment may be admitted to the stadium.
Bolsonaro expressed bewilderment that he was not admitted to the football match. “I wanted to watch the Santos match now, and they told me I had to be vaccinated. Why?” He asked.
The Brazilian president, who refuses to be vaccinated and encourages people to follow his example, says he has antibodies because he has already had COVID-19. A Santos spokesman said Bolsonaro’s team had not contacted the team, adding that all fans had to follow anti-epidemic rules.
More than 601,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Brazil since the beginning of the pandemic. The country ranks second in the grim statistics after the United States.
In Brazil, with a population of 212 million, a total of nearly 21.576 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed. The country is third in this indicator after the United States and India.
However, with the progress of the vaccination campaign, the coronavirus epidemic in Brazil has weakened.
More than 70 percent of Brazilians have received at least the first dose of vaccine.
The number of deaths from COVID-19 per day in the last week is below 500, compared to nearly 3,000 at the height of the epidemic in April.
On Sunday, the Brazilian Ministry of Health announced 182 deaths – the lowest number since November 15 last year. The new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours are only 8639 with a record of over 115,000.
