Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is continuing to play down the gravity of the coronavirus epidemic, The Guardian reports, taking a spin on a jet-ski even as the death toll in Brazil topped 10,000.
Bolsonaro has come under fire for his approach, and one Brazilian newspaper noted that the president has yet to meet health workers on the front lines of the battle against the epidemic, nor has he met with the families of any of the thousands of Brazilians who have died.
In response to the jet-ski excursion, left-wing politicians tweeted "Bolsonaro is a vile specimen," and "10,627 deaths."
Footage from the excursion shows Bolsonaro telling those accompanying him, "Seventy percent are going to catch the virus. There's nothing to be done. It's madness."
The British "Lancet" medical journal responded that Bolsonaro "continues to sow confusion by openly flouting and discouraging the sensible measures of physical distancing and lockdown."
So far, over 156,000 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Brazil.