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Brasilia (AFP) – Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa on Friday rejected President Jair Bolsonaro’s threats by asking for the names of the experts who approved anticovid vaccines for children to be revealed, a request that agency employees considered “fascist.”
“Anvisa is always ready to meet requests for information, but vehemently repudiates and repudiates any threat, explicit or veiled, that attempts to restrict, intimidate or compromise the free exercise of regulatory activities and the support of our families,” the agency said in a statement.
The regulator on Thursday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use in children ages 5 to 11, joining a growing list of countries extending vaccination to that age group.
Bolsonaro, who has joked that immunizers can transform people into “alligators” and refuses to be vaccinated, said that day that he asked “unofficially” for the names of those who approved the vaccination of children.
“You have the right to know the name of the people who approved the vaccine for your children. You decide if it compensates or not,” he said in his weekly broadcast on social networks, after mentioning possible contraindications when receiving the dose.
In response to comments from the far-right president, Anvisa said its officials have received “death threats” since October for their work evaluating and approving anticovid vaccines, and suggested that Bolsonaro’s words stoke those pressures.
“After suffering death threats and all sorts of criminal acts by anti-vaccine agents, within the framework of vaccination for children, this agency is in the focus and the crosshairs of violent political activism,” said the agency.
The association representing the employees of the health regulator, Univisa, also condemned Bolsonaro’s messages.
“It is shown as a threat of retaliation that, by not finding institutional means to do so, uses incitement to the citizen, an openly fascist method whose results can be tragic and violent,” he said in a note.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly sparked controversy with his handling of the pandemic, which kills more than 617,000 in Brazil, a number second only to the United States.
The president played down the virus by calling it a “little flu” and mocked the experts’ recommendations on measures to stay at home, masks and vaccines.
In October, a Senate investigative committee recommended that he face criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, for his government’s response to COVID-19.
© 2021 AFP
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