Bolsonaro threatens WHO exit as Brazil's coronavirus toll soars
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has threatened to pull his country out of the World Health Organization (WHO) after the United Nations agency warned governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the new coronavirus, Al Jazeera reported.
"I'm telling you right now, the United States left the WHO, and we're studying that, in the future," Bolsonaro told journalists outside the presidential palace on Friday. "Either the WHO works without ideological bias, or we leave, too."
The source reminds that US President Donald Trump said last month that Washington would end its own relationship with the WHO, accusing the organisation of becoming a puppet of China, where the coronavirus first emerged.
Bolsonaro has followed a similar script to the US president in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, downplaying its severity, criticising state authorities' stay-at-home measures and touting the purported effects of the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.