Emilio Lozoya, the former CEO of Mexico’s state oil company Pemex, who faces charges of money laundering and accepting bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, could be extradited to Mexico from a Spanish jail as early as Thursday. Lozoya, who last led Pemex just over four years ago, was a fugitive on the run until his arrest in the Spanish town of Malaga in late February on an outstanding arrest warrant from Mexico. Lozoya, who was close to former President Enrique Peña Nieto, decided to return voluntarily to Mexico and cooperate with prosecutors in cases against him for alleged corruption. Mexico sent a plane to Spain to transport Lozoya because of the restrictions on commercial flights due to   the coronavirus pandemic. 
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The Venezuelan government has done little to clamp down on the violent, brutal behavior of criminal groups who control mining in a region largely inhabited by indigenous communities, according to a U.N. report submitted Wednesday. The U.N. Human Rights Office noted that internal migration to the Arco Minero del Orinoco region has increased dramatically in the last few years because of the country’s economic crisis, and miners’ need to feed themselves and their families makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation.U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif said the groups who control the mines impose their own rules on workers through violence and extortion, which includes child labor, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and exposure to hazardous conditions and diseases, including mercury contamination.FILE – A miner descends into an underground gold mine in El Callao, Bolivar state, Venezuela, March 1, 2017.The report said miners, some as young as 9 years old, work 12-hour shifts under dangerous conditions without protection. Workers pay 10 to 20 percent of their earnings to the criminal groups and another 15 to 30 percent to the mill owners who extract the gold from the rocks. Lack of transparency makes it difficult to know what, if anything, the Venezuelan government has done to regulate mining activity and curb illegal operations, Al-Nashif said. “Despite the considerable presence of military and security forces inside the Arco Minero region, and efforts to tackle criminal activities, authorities have yet to fully comply with their obligation under international law to investigate and sanction violations of human rights related to mining operations,” she said.  Venezuela’s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Jorge Valero, rejected the report, saying his government was not asked for any input in compiling it.He said his country faces challenges, but blamed most of those on restrictions and sanctions imposed on his government by the United States. Those sanctions target Venezuelan industries such as petroleum, gold mining, and banking — for what U.S. President Donald Trump has said is the Nicolas Maduro government’s record of human rights abuses. These include the arbitrary arrest and detention of Venezuelan citizens.  Amnesty International’s report last year said Venezuela continued to experience an unprecedented human rights crisis, listing extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and excessive use of force against government critics. 
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Some gold, diamond and bauxite mines in the Venezuelan Amazon are largely controlled by criminal gangs who exploit, beat and even kill workers, a United Nations investigation has found.
 
Venezuelan security and military forces fail to prevent crimes and have participated in some violence against miners, the U.N. human rights office said in a report on Wednesday.
 
“Authorities should take immediate steps to end labor and sexual exploitation, child labor and human trafficking, and should dismantle criminal groups controlling mining activities,” Michelle Bachelet, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement.
 
Her deputy Nada Al-Nashif presented the findings, on the area known as the Orinoco Mining Arc, to the Human Rights Council saying: “According to first-hand accounts received by the Office, a large portion of mining activities remain under the control of organized criminal or armed elements that impose their own rules through violence and extortion.”
 
Venezuela’s ambassador, Jorge Valero, rejected the report in a speech that did not specifically mention mining.
 
“It is clear that there is manipulation and double standards at play here with a view to try to attack a sovereign state and expose it,” Valero told the Geneva forum.
 
The U.N. report said that 149 people were reported to have died in or around the mines from March 2016 to 2020, with security forces implicated in half of the incidents, adding that the government had not replied to its request for information.
 
“According to accounts received … bodies of miners are often thrown into old mining pits used as clandestine graves,” the report said.
 
The miners, who include young children, lack employment contracts and are exposed to mercury contamination and malaria, the report said.
 
It called for the government of President Nicolas Maduro to regularize mining activities and ensure that they meet international legal and environmental standards.
 
Created by a government decree in 2016, the area of some 42,800 square miles (111,000 sq km) in the Venezuelan Amazon is equivalent to 12 per cent of national territory.
 
Gold, diamonds, coltan, iron and bauxite are mined.
 
Venezuela’s central bank has not published data on gold and mineral exports since 2018, the report said.
 
The Maduro government has supported small-scale mining since 2016 to bring in revenue amid an economic crisis. Operations have expanded as the United States has increased sanctions.
 
Criminal groups have become more active since concessions for foreign mining companies were terminated in 2011, the report said.
  
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Chilean President Sebastian Piñera is hoping his second economic stimulus package proposal to help middle-class citizens impacted by the coronavirus lockdown gets the full backing of the Congress.  His initial $1.5 billion proposal failed to generate enough support from the Chilean Congress last week. In a televised speech, Pinera said his latest proposal delivers financial contributions directly to the middle class. Piñera’s new stimulus package also has credit extensions, rent subsidies and loans to help pay for college.  Piñera hopes his proposal will counter an initiative by the opposition that would allow pensioners to withdraw 10 percent of their savings from a total of 200,000 dollars in Chile’s Pension Funds Administrator.  The opposition argues Piñera’s proposal is costly and would burden the middle class with unnecessary debt. 
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s self-isolation with the coronavirus does not appear to be affording him any sympathy from protesters calling for his resignation. Demonstrators, who are upset over Bolsonaro’s response to the outbreak, placed crosses representing COVID-19 victims outside the Brazilian Congress in the capital, Brasilia, on Tuesday. Protesters, including members of trade unions, Indigenous people and LGBT activists, delivered a petition to Congress calling for his impeachment.  Bolsonaro has been widely criticized for downplaying the impact of the pandemic.  Indigenous leader Kretan Kaingang said demonstrators also wanted to honor warriors who died during the pandemic.  Brazil has confirmed more than 74,000 deaths, the second-highest in the world behind the United States.  So far, nearly two million people have been infected with the coronavirus in Brazil.  
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Ada Gutierrez has thought about returning to Venezuela every single day since Colombia went into quarantine in late March.Gutierrez, one of 5 million people who have fled crisis-stricken Venezuela, has spent months of quarantine in Colombia selling candy on the streets of Medellín, the country’s second biggest city.If she is lucky, she can scrape together enough money each night for her and her and her 18-month-old daughter to split a hotel room with other Venezuelan families. If not, the two sleep on the streets.“Just like all the Venezuelans around here, we have slept on the street,” she said, outside a station delivering parcels of food to migrants.“If we have to, we do not eat for the entire day to pay for our room. Our reality here is living day-to-day, sleeping in the streets and going hungry,” said Gutierrez.Life in limboAs Latin America emerged as the epicenter of the pandemic, Gutierrez said she wants to return home to Venezuela just as 81,000 other Venezuelans had done by the end of  June, according to Colombia’s border control agency.Gutierrez is among 30,000 Venezuelans that Colombian authorities say are in limbo on the Colombian side of the border.Their choice is stay in Colombia and struggle to survive through the lockdown or go home to a situation of uncertainty.At the beginning of the pandemic, migrants walked hundreds of miles back to the Venezuelan border. Others returned by buses facilitated by Colombia, the biggest receiver of the exodus – now eager to send them home.When they arrive at the border, migrants describe a brutal, sometimes months-long process before they can return home, packed into facilities by Venezuelan authorities with hundreds of other migrants, sleeping on cement floors and often eating little more than undercooked eggs and corn cakes known as arepas.FearThe return would be too harsh for her baby, Eva, to go through, Gutierrez said. Other vulnerable populations – families, the elderly, and migrants living with disabilities or medical conditions – have echoed Gutierrez’ fears. So day after day, she has opted to stay, hoping that at the end of the day, she and Eva will have food, a place to sleep and enough luck to not get infected.In recent weeks, the Venezuelan government has placed a limit on migrants crossing back to Venezuela, only letting 400 of its citizens cross the land border three times a week.This comes despite President Nicolas Maduro’s calls for Venezuelans to return home at the beginning of the pandemic, announcing over state television that returnees would be treated with “love and affection.”Now, more than 30,000 migrants are stuck waiting in Colombia alone, many in makeshift camps in big cities like Medellín and Bogota. The Colombian government said that the process to return could now take up to 6 months.Venezuelan migrants attempting to return to their country due to the COVID-19 pandemic remain in makeshift camps at the Simon Bolivar International Bridge in Cucuta, Colombia, July 7, 2020.As cases jump across the region, aid providers like Arles Pereda, president of COLVENZ, the Colony of Venezuelans in Colombia nonprofit group, warn that those camps could become hotbeds for contagion.“There is a very, very high possibility of an outbreak,” Pereda said. “We have had a lot of luck because that still has not happened,” he said. but it has been very tense because with this invisible enemy, we do not know when it is going to attack.”Pereda’s organization once provided a safety net to migrants arriving to Medellín. Now, they distribute boxes of food to families starving in months of quarantine and try to connect Venezuelans wanting to return with local governments.COVID-19 time bombDespite low testing rates, Colombia has reported 150,445 confirmed cases and 5,634 deaths as of July 14. Venezuela has reported 9,707 cases and 93 deaths, but observers say the Maduro government is drastically undercounting cases.An employee of the Ministry of Health talks to a man who will undergo a rapid test for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Bogota, Colombia, July 1, 2020.In a Reuters interview last month, Colombian President Iván Duque described  Venezuela as public health “time bomb.”The exodus from Venezuela has ballooned in recent years as the South American country’s economic and political spiral accelerates, compounding its medical and energy crises.  In a report last year, the Council on Foreign Relations said 3.3 million Venezuelans – 10% of Venezuela’s population –  had fled in a four-year period starting in 2015.Gutierrez left two years ago to give birth to her daughter in Colombia because Venezuelan hospitals were already collapsed and maternal and infant mortalities have skyrocketed.A member of the National Police Action Force uses a megaphone, telling people to return home due to the government-ordered lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, in Caracas, Venezuela, July 2, 2020.The mass-migration to countries like Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile is set to surpass Syria’s as the biggest migration in the world, yet Venezuelan migrants only receive pennies on the dollar in international aid compared to their Syrian counterparts.Pereda and Gimena Sanchez, Andes director for the Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA, say resources were already insufficient before the pandemic hit. The needs are only heightened as migrants lose their jobs, are kicked out of their homes and face rising xenophobia.Sanchez said the pandemic is likely to transform the exodus and leave more migrants like the Gutierrez family vulnerable.Exodus changing direction“They cannot transit like they used to,” she said. “What you are going to see is more and more people becoming stuck or going back-and-forth.”While Colombia was once largely a transit country, regional restrictions and instability will push migrants to increasingly stay on Colombian territory, she said. As the crisis stretches on, Sanchez said there will be more of an ebb-and-flow from Venezuela as waves of crises strike, turning migration from a one-directional exodus to more of a pendulum of flows between the two countries.That could be devastating for Colombia, which is still struggling to emerge from decades of an internal conflict that already displaced nearly 8 million of its own citizens.Gutierrez takes it one day at time. As she sees it, she has no other choice.“I’m scared, but I have to go out to the streets every single day and search for a way to feed ourselves,” she said, “because that’s how we stay alive.” 
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has self-quarantined nearly a week after testing positive for the new coronavirus, is scheduled to take another COVID-19 test on Tuesday. Speaking by phone with CNN on Monday, outside his official residence at the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said, he expects to get the results within a few hours, adding he feels well, but cannot stand being in isolation. Since the start of the outbreak four months ago, Bolsonaro has downplayed the seriousness of the epidemic, criticizing Brazilian governors for imposing restrictions to slow the spread of the virus. President Bolsonaro’s opposition is further highlighted because Brazil is the second-worst hit country in the world, only behind the United States. Brazil has confirmed more than1.8 million cases of the coronavirus and more than 72,800 deaths. 
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Ousmann Umar knows only too well how tough it is for migrants from Africa to reach Europe. Dumped in the Sahara by trafficking gangs when he was only 13, he believed he would share the fate of other migrants whose bodies lay strewn on the route northwards. Unlike the others, he survived, not just the desert but every step of a five-year odyssey from Ghana to Spain. Thirteen years later, the son of a traditional healer is now a businessman in Barcelona with a master’s degree from one of the world’s top business schools. On the face of it, he seems a poster boy for young Africans dreaming of a life in Europe. Instead, Umar, 30, has made it his mission to persuade Africans to stay at home rather than follow in his footsteps, insisting the emotional cost is too high. As Spain currently pushes for a joint European Union migration policy, the number of illegal immigrants who reached the country by land or sea between January and June fell by 31% compared with the same period in 2019. About 7,744 people made it to Spain during that time, compared with 11,316 in 2019. Traffickers switched routes from the Mediterranean to moving people from Mauritania in West Africa to the Canary Islands, a precarious 100-kilometer journey. Some 80% of all the 120,000 applications for asylum in Spain come from Latin American countries, principally from Venezuela and Colombia. Latin Americans  favored? Migrants from Africa and other parts of the world have claimed they are at a disadvantage in comparison with those who arrive from South or Central America. The reality, it seems, is more complicated. FILE – Venezuelan refugees, 8-month pregnant Stephanie Paez and her partner Kervin Leiva, hang clothes to dry outside their bungalow in La Ciguena holiday complex amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in Arganda del Rey, Spain, April 3, 2020.Umar shares the view that it is easier for Latin Americans to reach the Promised Land and attain the hallowed status of residency. “It seems much easier for them to get legal residence here than some Africans because of the colonial links with Spain,” he told VOA. “I am from Ghana, which was a British colony, so for instance it would be easier for me to gain legal status in the UK.” However, he said the system itself made it very hard for anyone to establish themselves in Spain. “What you need is to be living in the same place for three years and to have a work contract for a year and then the Spanish are almost forced to grant you residence,” Umar said. “It is a mad system which forces people, wherever they are from, to live illegally in utter poverty in the hope they can get residency. It can apply to either Africans or Latin Americans,” he said.  Umar set up a charity, Nasco Feeding Minds, to buy computers for 19 schools in Ghana. He works with banks and other businesses, giving inspirational speeches and other European countries. After a torturous route through Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, he eventually made it on a flimsy boat to the Canary Islands. From there, he ended up in Barcelona. After two years living rough, Umar got help from by a Spanish family who supported him through school. “I would not wish it on anyone,” he confides. Nuria Díaz, spokeswoman for CEAR, the Spanish Commission for Refugees, an NGO in Madrid, said getting to Spain was far harder for African or Asian migrants than for Latin Americans. Red Cross members take the temperature of a migrant before disembarking from a Spanish coast guard vessel in the port of Arguineguin on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, May 17, 2020.“The practicality of it is with the European Union policy of trying to bar migration right now because of coronavirus, it is very difficult for these migrants to arrive via the Mediterranean. In comparison, Latin Americans can get to Spain by air, but they are still facing barriers because of the virus,” she in an interview with VOA. “Normally, in many cases, they do not need a visa because of reciprocal agreements between Spain and their governments.” Onshore, equal treatment Díaz added: “However, once they are here, the law is equal for all. Only 5% of those who apply for asylum get it. Last year, there was a waiting list of 120,000 and it normally takes up to 18 months for your case to be considered.” Judith Tabares, a lawyer who specializes in migration cases, says the ability of migrants to secure legal residence in Spain differs from case to case. “In theory it would be easy to say that it is easier for Latin Americans than Africans but in reality that is not the case,” she told VOA. Venezuelan residents in Spain gather at the QW Bar in Madrid, Spain, May 15, 2018. Picture taken May 15, 2018.“One migrant from an African country may have a relative living here which can help them while someone from Venezuela may still struggle to get legal status after years.” A spokesman for Spanish immigration ministry said: “The process of asylum is equal for all. All migrants when they arrive in Spain are treated the same, wherever they come from.”   
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has self-quarantined nearly a week after testing positive for the new coronavirus, is scheduled to take another COVID-19 test on Tuesday. Speaking by phone with CNN on Monday, outside his official residence at the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said, he expects to get the results within a few hours, adding he feels well, but cannot stand being in isolation. Since the start of the outbreak four months ago, Bolsonaro has downplayed the seriousness of the epidemic, criticizing Brazilian governors for imposing restrictions to slow the spread of the virus. President Bolsonaro’s opposition is further highlighted because Brazil is the second-worst hit country in the world, only behind the United States. Brazil has confirmed more than1.8 million cases of the coronavirus and more than 72,800 deaths. 
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Mexico announced it’s considering an offer of $120 million in cash plus medical equipment from an unnamed entity to buy a luxury equipped presidential airplane. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been trying sell off the plane of his predecessor, former President Enrique Pena Nieto, since taking office in late 2018 on a campaign pledge of fugal spending.  López Obrador has been flying commercial airlines, citing the presidential plane to be an extravagance, with its presidential suite. Experts say the 787 Boeing jet, which initially cost $200 million, will be hard to off load because it would be difficult to reconfigure into a regular passenger jet. In an effort to boost the value of the presidential plane, the government is separately conducting a raffle, with winners getting cash prizes. 
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized on Monday for taking part in a Cabinet decision to use a charity he and his family have worked with to administer a $900 million ($663.4 million) student grant program.Trudeau, 48, is facing a third investigation for conflict of interest in a little over three years after his government tapped WE Charity Canada on June 25 to manage the program. The charity backed out about a week after the contract was announced. “I made a mistake in not recusing myself immediately from the discussions, given our family’s history, and I’m sincerely sorry about not having done that,” Trudeau said at a news conference. It is the second time in less than a year that the prime minister has apologized publicly for his actions in a live, nationally televised news conference. The first time was in September after decades-old images of him in blackface emerged. “I was very aware that members of my family had worked with and contributed to the WE organization, but I was unaware of the details of their remuneration,” Trudeau said. WE Charity disclosed last week that from 2016-2020 it paid honoraria to Trudeau’s mother, Margaret, amounting to C$250,000 for speaking at some 28 events, while his brother, Alexandre, received about C$32,000. Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, have regularly participated in WE Charity events, and Gregoire Trudeau hosts a podcast on the charity’s website for which she is not paid. Also on Monday, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, whose daughter works at WE Charity, offered a similar apology. “I will recuse myself from any future discussions related to WE,” Morneau said. The grant program, meant to help students struggling to find summer jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been stymied by the controversy, and the government is now looking for a different way to administer it.  
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Several companies that certify vessels are seaworthy and ship insurers have withdrawn services to tankers involved in the Venezuelan oil trade as the United States targets the maritime industry to tighten sanctions on the Latin American country.U.S. sanctions have driven Venezuela’s oil exports to their lowest levels in nearly 80 years, starving President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government of its main source of revenue and leaving authorities short of cash for essential imports such as food and medicine.The sanctions are part of U.S. efforts to weaken Maduro’s grip on power after Washington and other Western democracies accused him of rigging a 2018 reelection vote. Despite the country’s economic collapse, Maduro has held on and frustrated the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.Maduro’s government says the United States is trying to seize Venezuela’s oil and calls the U.S. measures illegal persecution that heap suffering on the Venezuelan people.Washington has homed in on the maritime industry in recent months in efforts to better enforce sanctions on the oil trade and isolate Caracas, Washington’s special envoy on Venezuela Elliott Abrams told Reuters.”What you will see is most shipowners and insurance and captains are simply going to turn away from Venezuela,” Abrams told Reuters in an interview.”It’s just not worth the hassle or the risk for them.”The United States is pressuring shipping companies, insurers, certifiers and flag states that register vessels, he said.Ship classification societies, which certify safety and environmental standards for vessels, are feeling the heat for the first time.The United States is pressuring classifiers to establish whether vessels have violated sanctions regulations and to withdraw certification if so, as a way to tighten sanctions further, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.Without certification, a vessel and its cargo become uninsured. Ship owners would also be in breach of commercial contracts which require certificates to be maintained. In addition, port authorities can refuse entry or detain a ship.London-headquartered Lloyd’s Register (LR), one of the world’s leading ship classifiers, said it had withdrawn services from eight tankers that were involved in trade with Venezuela.”In accordance with our program for complying with sanctions’ laws, where we become aware of vessels operating in breach of relevant sanctions laws, LR classification has been withdrawn,” a Lloyd’s Register spokeswoman said.Abrams said the pressure on the maritime industry was working.”We have had a number of shippers that come to us and say, ‘We just had our insurance company withdraw the insurance, and the ship is on the high seas and we’ve got to get to port. Could you give us a license for one week?'” Abrams said.In June, the United States designated six shipping companies — two of them based in Greece – and six tankers they owned for participating in proscribed Venezuelan trade.Another leading ship classifier, Hamburg-headquartered DNV GL Maritime, said it had suspended services for three of those vessels in June.The company resumed services when the United States removed those vessels from the list of sanctioned entities after the shipping companies that own and operate the vessels agreed to cease trade with Venezuela.Chilling effectThe United States has threatened sanctions on any company involved in the oil trade with Venezuela, and that has had a chilling effect even on trade permitted under sanctions.Some oil companies are refusing to charter vessels that have called at Venezuelan ports in the past year, even if the voyage was exempt from sanctions.”The shipping sector has been at the receiving end of U.S. action on Venezuela and it has caused much uncertainty as no one knows who will be next,” one shipping industry source said.Insurers are also in a bind. They have been conservative in their interpretation of U.S. sanctions to avoid any potential violations, said Mike Salthouse, chairman of the sanctions sub-committee with the International Group association. The group represents companies that insure about 90% of the world’s commercial shipping.”If there is ambiguity as to what is lawful and what is unlawful it makes it almost impossible for an insurer to say whether someone has cover or not,” he said.Even after ships and companies are removed from the sanctions list, they may face difficulties, Salthouse said.”The stigma associated with a designation may last some time,” he said.Oil majors, for example, may review relationships with companies that own or manage vessels that the United States had designated and then removed to avoid any possible problems with other vessels, he said.’Real threat’Venezuela is on the list of high-risk areas set by officials from London’s insurance market.”If a vessel sails to Venezuela they have to notify the underwriter and it may be that the underwriter will not be able to cover them,” said Neil Roberts, head of marine underwriting at Lloyd’s Market Association, which represents the interests of all underwriting businesses in London’s Lloyd’s market.The industry faces “the direct and real threat of having its trade stopped by a watchful U.S. administration because of an inadvertent infringement,” he said.”This risk alone is enough to fuel the multiplication of compliance checks.”Some of the biggest global flag registries including Panama and Liberia are also looking more closely at ships that were involved in Venezuela trading as they come under U.S. pressure to withdraw registration for ships violating sanctions.Maritime lawyers in Panama said its registry is fining vessels that do not comply with the U.S. maritime guidance issued in May. The registry is mostly de-flagging vessels targeted by multilateral sanctions rather than unilateral U.S. sanctions, the lawyers said.Officials at Liberia’s registry did not respond to requests for comment.U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a former investor in shipping, helped craft the strategy targeting the maritime sector, sources said.A Commerce Department spokesperson acknowledged Ross had worked with other government agencies “to determine how to best hold accountable those who are evading U.S. sanctions” on Venezuela.Abrams vowed to keep up the pressure.”There are people who don’t cooperate … We’ll go after the ship, the ship owner, the ship captain.” 
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro spent his first week in isolation doing the things he’d scoffed at for months: wearing a face mask and practicing social distancing.Bolsonaro, who said Tuesday he had tested positive for the coronavirus, is taking the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine. On Saturday, his wife said her test and those of her two daughters came back negative.Bolsonaro, who said his symptoms are aches, fever and malaise, has a new routine of virtual meetings and Facebook live broadcasts spent in the company of a few aides who had previously tested positive. Not so long ago Bolsonaro was attending rallies and going out to mix and mingle.“I’m sorry I can’t interact with you here. Not even next week will it be possible, because I think I will not yet be completely free of the virus, so I will not have anyone on my side here,” Bolsonaro said on his weekly Facebook broadcast Thursday.Brazil, with 1,071 new deaths Saturday, has a total of nearly 71,500 deaths and 1.9 million confirmed cases. The South American nation trails only the United States in cases and deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.Worldwide, there are more than 12.6 million confirmed cases and more than 560,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.In Iran on Saturday, President Hassan Rouhani said the nation’s economy must stay open despite a rise in the number of coronavirus infections. He called for a ban on large gatherings, such as at weddings and wakes, to limit the spread of the virus.Iran reported Saturday that in the previous 24 hours, there had been 2,397 new COVID-19 cases and 188 deaths related to the virus, for a more than 255,000 confirmed cases and a death toll of more than 12,600. The country, which has a population of more than 80 million, ranks ninth globally in the number of cases and deaths due to the coronavirus.“We must ban ceremonies and gatherings all over the country, whether it be wakes, weddings or parties,” Rouhani said, according to a Reuters report. Shortly after he spoke, Tehran police closed all wedding and mourning venues until further notice, the wire service reported.Also Saturday, in India, Biocon, an Indian biopharmaceutical company, told Reuters it had received regulatory approval for its drug Itolizumab to be used in India on coronavirus-infected patients suffering from moderate to severe respiratory distress.Itolizumab also is used to cure the skin disease psoriasis.India, with a population of nearly 1.4 billion people, has recorded 820,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and a death toll of 22,000.In Australia, Victoria’s capital city of Melbourne has begun a six-week lockdown because of a spike in coronavirus cases.“Nobody is enjoying being locked at home. It is frustrating, it is challenging, but the strategy will be successful if we all play our part,” Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria state, said Saturday.Victoria reported 216 new cases Saturday, down from 288 Friday.“We will see more and more additional cases,” Andrews said. “This is going to be with us for months and months.”Australia’s seven other states and territories reported 11 new cases Saturday.Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease expert, warned that the pandemic is worsening in the U.S. because the country lacks a coherent strategy to contain the virus.“As a country, when we compare ourselves to other countries, I don’t think you can say we are doing great. I mean, we’re just not,” Fauci said in a recent interview.Fauci suggested earlier this week that states struggling to combat the virus “should seriously look at shutting down,” despite state efforts to reopen in order to revive their economies.Dozens of U.S. Marines have been infected on the Japanese island of Okinawa, officials said. They said the U.S. military asked that the exact figure not be released.“We now have strong doubts that the U.S. military has taken adequate disease prevention measures,” Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters.On Saturday, the United States reported more than 66,000 new infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the latest in a string of record-breaking days.The U.S. remains the hardest-hit country, with about one-quarter of all confirmed infections and fatalities worldwide. As of late Saturday, more than 3.2 million people in the U.S. had contracted the virus and more than 134,000 had died from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University.On Saturday, Disney World in the Southern U.S. state of Florida opened to tourists after nearly four months, with guidelines in place to help prevent spreading the coronavirus.Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom reopened Saturday; Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios will open next week.Among the many guidelines put in place: a mandatory mask rule, social distancing required; guests will not be allowed to hop between parks; and the popular daily fireworks shows and parades have been suspended to help limit drawing large crowds.  
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The coronavirus pandemic is sweeping through the leadership of Latin America, with two more presidents and powerful officials testing positive this week for the new coronavirus, adding a destabilizing new element to the region’s public health and economic crises.In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, 65, announced his illness Tuesday and is using it to publicly extol hydroxychloroquine, the unproven malaria drug that he’s been promoting as a treatment for COVID-19 and now takes himself.Bolivian interim President Jeanine Añez, 53, made her own diagnosis public Thursday, throwing her already troubled political prospects into further doubt.And in Venezuela, 57-year-old socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said Thursday on Twitter that he, too, had tested positive, at least temporarily sidelining a larger-than-life figure considered the second-most-powerful person in the country.Another powerful figure, Venezuela’s Oil Minister Tarek El Aissami, announced Friday he has the bug.Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez, wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, waves during a procession Corpus Christi, in La Paz, Bolivia, June 11, 2020.An Associated Press review of official statements from public officials across Latin America found at least 42 confirmed cases of new coronavirus in leaders ranging from presidents to mayors of major cities, along with dozens, likely hundreds, of officials from smaller cities and towns. In most cases, high-ranking officials recovered and are back at work. But several are still struggling with the disease.Many leaders have used their diagnoses to call on the public to heighten precautions like social distancing and mask wearing. But like Bolsonaro, some have drawn attention to unproven treatments with potentially harmful side effects.El Salvador’s Interior Minister, Mario Durán, was diagnosed on July 5, becoming the second Cabinet member there to fall ill.“I am asking you, now more than ever, to stay home and take all preventive measures,” he said after his diagnosis. “Protect your families.’’Durán was receiving treatment at home on Friday.Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández announced June 16 that he and his wife had tested positive, along with two other people who worked closely with the couple.The following day the 51-year-old Hernández was hospitalized after doctors determined he had pneumonia. The president’s illness came as the pandemic spread from an early epicenter in the northern city of San Pedro Sula to the capital of Tegucigalpa, where cases surged.Hernández said he had started what he called the “MAIZ treatment,” an experimental and unproven combination of microdacyn, azithromycin, ivermectin and zinc that his government is promoting as an affordable way of attacking the disease. He was released from the hospital July 2.The revelation that Cabello – whose commanding voice resonates from Venezuelan airwaves every Wednesday on his weekly television show – has COVID-19 will likely have a sobering impact on the many people who thought their isolated country was relatively shielded from the virus, said Luis Vicente León, a Venezuelan political analyst.This handout picture released by the Honduran Presidency shows Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez sending a live message to the nation on July 2, 2020, announcing he has recovered from COVID-19.Venezuela – already largely cut off to the outside world before COVID-19 – has had far fewer registered cases than many other countries in Latin America, though in recent weeks the number of new confirmed infections has been steadily increasing.Cabello said he was in isolation while getting treatment. A day earlier, he’d canceled his regular TV appearance, telling followers he was battling “strong allergies.”No information has been released on whether Cabello is hospitalized or what type of medical care he is receiving. Venezuela is considered one of the least prepared countries in the world to confront the pandemic. Hospitals are routinely short on basic supplies like water, electricity and medicine.“I think this shows Venezuela is on the same route all the other countries,” León said.In the Caribbean, Luis Abinader, the newly elected president of the Dominican Republic, contracted and recovered from COVID-19 during his campaign.Like Bolsonaro, many Latin leaders have kept up a schedule of public appearances even as the region has become one of the hardest hit in the world.That poses a growing risk to governance in the region, said Felicia Knaul, a professor of medicine who directs the Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas at the University of Miami.“We’re trying to keep our health providers safe. It’s the same for our government leaders. We don’t want a Cabinet ill and in hospital. It would be tremendously destabilizing in a situation that’s already extremely unstable,” she said. “That’s a reason why being out in public unless everyone around you has masks on is dangerous. They have to be responsible.”Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei placed his entire Cabinet and their staff in quarantine Thursday after one of his ministers tested positive.In Bolivia, officials said the interim president Añez, had not been displaying symptoms and was in good spirits in her official residence on Friday.At least six other Bolivian ministers and vice ministers have been infected, and at least eight staff members.The coronavirus is spreading rapidly in Bolivia, overwhelming the already weak medical system and funeral services to the point where families in the central city of Cochabamba have been holding funerals in the street.With the country in crisis, some polls have shown Añez in last place in a three-way presidential race leading to September elections. Añez, who took office after President Evo Morales was ousted during national unrest last year, does not have a vice president and, if she could no longer serve, the next in the line of succession is Senate President Eva Copa, a member of Morales’ party and a bitter opponent of Añez. 
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Amid a surge in coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump flew to Florida on Friday on a visit that melded his administration’s policy toward Venezuela and Cuba and his reelection bid in one of the nation’s biggest swing states.Trump hosted a round-table discussion in Doral, in Miami-Dade County, home to one of the largest Venezuelan communities in the United States. Flanked by Venezuelan and Cuban dissidents, Trump reiterated his administration’s support for the people of Venezuela and Cuba.“We are standing with the righteous leader of Venezuela, Juan Guaido,” Trump said, adding that he had ended the “Obama-Biden sellout to the Castro regime.”Trump laid out a similar message at an earlier event Friday as he met with leaders of the U.S. Southern Command to review the counternarcotics operation in the Caribbean, an effort his administration has described partly as an attempt to intercept funds going to the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.“We’re going to fight for Venezuela and we’re going to be fighting for our friends from Cuba,” Trump said.FILE – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido talks to a journalist during an interview with The Associated Press in Brussels, Jan. 22, 2020.Last year, Guaido, who was then Venezuelan National Assembly president, took over the role of interim president, replacing Maduro. Washington’s early support for Guaido helped him gain diplomatic recognition from about 60 countries. But a series of sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba and a proposal for a peaceful transition presented by the U.S. State Department have failed to persuade Maduro to leave office.In June, Trump was criticized for saying he was open to meeting with Maduro. Trump later clarified he would do so only to discuss the Venezuelan president’s exit.Shifting Venezuela policyPresumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden reminded voters of what he described as Trump’s shifting Venezuela foreign policy in a statement Friday.“Just like his response to this pandemic, the president has been unreliable and self-centered in his approach to the issues closest to the Venezuelan people,” Biden said.He renewed his pledge to grant Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans to allow them to live and work in the United States and said he would lead a coordinated international effort to help Venezuela’s failing economy. He called Trump’s Florida visit a “photo-op and a distraction from his failures.”FILE – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro speaks during an event with the youth of Venezuela’s United Socialist Party in Caracas, Venezuela, June 22, 2020.At the round-table event in Florida, Trump hit back at his Democratic opponent. As attendees shared their experiences of fleeing from socialist countries, Trump described Biden as a puppet of progressive Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “the militant left.”Despite sanctions and diplomatic pressure by the Trump administration, the issue of Venezuela remains unresolved.“The power struggle between Juan Guaido and Nicolas Maduro endures with no end in sight,” wrote FILE – A health care worker takes a swab sample from a driver at a drive-through COVID-19 testing site outside Hard Rock Stadium, July 8, 2020, in Miami Gardens, Fla. Florida is one of the nation’s hot spots for coronavirus.Overshadowed by pandemicFlorida reported nearly 11,500 more cases of COVID-19 on Friday, bringing the total number of cases to nearly 245,000 across the state. The state’s health department reported nearly 440 more hospitalizations Friday, the largest single-day increase the state has seen thus far.Trump allies Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez are both facing criticism for their handling of the pandemic. DeSantis downplayed the outbreak early on but has since been forced to pause the state’s reopening amid a resurgence of the virus.Despite the surge of cases, Republicans still plan to hold their national convention next month in Jacksonville, Florida.The Trump campaign has been criticized for holding rallies and other large gatherings amid the pandemic. On Friday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump was postponing a rally in New Hampshire set for  Saturday, citing a tropical storm forecast to hit in the area.Trump ended his Florida trip with a private fundraiser at Hillsboro Beach before returning to the White House.Maritime counternarcoticsSince the Trump administration increased its maritime counternarcotics focus April 1, the U.S. has added 75% more surveillance aircraft and 65% more ships to support drug interdictions, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday during the U.S. Southern Command meeting with Trump.President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing on counternarcotics operations at U.S. Southern Command, July 10, 2020, in Doral, Fla.The enhanced operations have allowed the U.S. and its allies to ramp up targeting of known maritime smugglers by 60%, Esper added, disrupting more than 122 metric tons of drugs and denying $2 billion in drug profits since late March.That means that in the last three months alone, the U.S. and allies interdicted nearly half the amount of drugs that they interdicted in all of last year. According to SOUTHCOM data provided to VOA, the U.S. and its allies interdicted 273 metric tons of drugs in 2018 and 280 metric tons of drugs in 2019.Still, these counternarcotics operations are making just a small dent in the illegal-drug profits of transnational criminal organizations, estimated at $90 billion a year according to SOUTHCOM.In written testimony before the asset increase took effect, SOUTHCOM commander Admiral Craig Faller said the U.S. “only enabled the successful interdiction of about 9 percent of known drug movement” recently in Latin America and the Caribbean.VOA Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report.
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Goya Foods is facing a swift backlash after its CEO praised President Donald Trump at a White House event.Goya was founded in Manhattan in 1936 by Don Prudencio Unanue and his wife Carolina, immigrants from Spain. The company calls itself the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States.  Robert Unanue, a grandson and now Goya CEO, spoke at a Rose Garden event announcing a “Hispanic Prosperity Initiative” on Thursday.  “We all truly blessed, at the same time, to have have a leader like President Trump who is a builder,” Unanue said standing at a podium beside Trump.Almost immediately, #BoycottGoya, #GoyaFoods and #Goyaway began trending on social media platforms like Twitter, with scorn coming seemingly from all directions, including some big political names.  Many were angered by the support, citing Trump’s history of derogatory comments and harsh policies toward Hispanics, most notably, the administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.Former presidential candidate Julian Castro was among those to take to Twitter, saying Unanue praised someone who villainizes Goya’s customer base.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said she would learn to make from scratch some of the Latin cuisine that Goya makes.  Goya did not immediately comment.  According to the Pew Research Center, 13.3% of eligible voters in the U.S. this year are Latino, a record high.Trump has been working hard recently to court Latino voters, who could swing the vote in states such as Arizona. On Wednesday, he welcomed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the White House with lofty language, calling Mexico a cherished partner. Trump’s tone was in stark contrast from when he kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign by referring to Mexicans as “rapists” and railed against migrants entering the United States illegally.  Goya recently donated thousands of pounds of food to families in the Bronx and Harlem who have been affected by COVID-19. The company also made a big donation to a public school in Queens. 
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The leader of Venezuela’s ruling Socialist party, Diosdado Cabello, is self-quarantining after testing positive for the coronavirus, making him the highest-ranking official in the South American nation to contract the virus.Cabello announced his infection in a tweet Thursday. He vowed to overcome the disease, writing, “We will win!”President Nicolas Maduro said Cabello is fine but added he will need several days of treatment and recovery.Cabello’s diagnosis comes a few days after the governor of Venezuela’s Zulia state, Omar Prieto, tested positive for the coronavirus after being treated for a respiratory illness.Venezuela has confirmed more than 8,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 75 deaths. 
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Latin America and the Caribbean have become “a hot spot” for the coronavirus pandemic, with several countries tallying the highest per capita infection rates in the world.During his video briefing report Thursday, Guterres said COVID-19’s impact on countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is expected to result in the deepest recession in living memory.Guterres said in the short-term response governments should consider providing people living in poverty with emergency basic incomes and anti-hunger grants.He said the novel coronavirus is having an especially hard impact on Latin America and the Caribbean’s most vulnerable groups, who lag in access to health care services and stable employment.Guterres said indigenous people of African descent, migrants and refugees are also suffering disproportionately.In his report, Guterres said some unnamed countries in the region are not prepared to address the health and human crises created by the pandemic.The U.N. chief said the international community must provide financial help and debt relief for Latin America and the Caribbean. 
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Latin America and the Caribbean have become “a hot spot” for the coronavirus pandemic, with several countries tallying the highest per capita infection rates in the world.During his video briefing report Thursday, Guterres said COVID-19’s impact on countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is expected to result in the deepest recession in living memory.Guterres said in the short-term response governments should consider providing people living in poverty with emergency basic incomes and anti-hunger grants.He said the novel coronavirus is having an especially hard impact on Latin America and the Caribbean’s most vulnerable groups, who lag in access to health care services and stable employment.Guterres said indigenous people of African descent, migrants and refugees are also suffering disproportionately.In his report, Guterres said some unnamed countries in the region are not prepared to address the health and human crises created by the pandemic.The U.N. chief said the international community must provide financial help and debt relief for Latin America and the Caribbean. 
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The leader of Venezuela’s ruling Socialist party, Diosdado Cabello, is self-quarantining after testing positive for the coronavirus, making him the highest-ranking official in the South American nation to contract the virus.Cabello announced his infection in a tweet Thursday. He vowed to overcome the disease, writing, “We will win!”President Nicolas Maduro said Cabello is fine but added he will need several days of treatment and recovery.Cabello’s diagnosis comes a few days after the governor of Venezuela’s Zulia state, Omar Prieto, tested positive for the coronavirus after being treated for a respiratory illness.Venezuela has confirmed more than 8,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 75 deaths. 
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Interim Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez says she is self -quarantining and feels fine after testing positive for the cororonavirus.Áñez said Thursday she was tested for the virus last week after members of her staff became infected.She said she will remain in quarantine for 14 days before taking a new test to monitor her condition.The Bolivian leader said she feels strong and will continue working from isolation.Áñez became president in November after her predecessor, Evo Morales, left the country amid weeks of protests over his controversial reelection to an unconstitutional fourth term.Voters will decide on September 6 if Áñez will become the permanent president.Áñez’s infection comes as hospitals treating coronavirus patients in Bolivia’s two largest cities, La Paz and El Alto, are overwhelmed by the demand.So far, Bolivia has confirmed more than 42,000 coronavirus cases and more than 1,500 deaths.  
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Brazil will ban fires in the Amazon forest for 120 days, heeding the demands of global investors upset over environmental destruction, the government said Thursday. A formal decree banning fires will come next week. Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao made the announcement during a virtual investment conference Thursday with several European firms. He cited a letter signed by 29 firms — some of whom are threatening to cut all investment in Brazil unless the environmental degradation stops. “It’s a positive first step, and we need to continue the dialogue, and hopefully we’ll all see some results on the ground,” said Jeanett Bergan, head of responsible investments for KLP, Norway’s largest pension fund. The investors told Brazilian authorities they monitor deforestation rates, prevention of forest fires, and enforcement of Brazil’s forest code when assessing their investment strategy in Brazil. FILE – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro leaves his official residence of Alvorada palace in Brasilia, May 25, 2020.Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has come under global condemnation for his promise to open the vast Amazon rainforest to development and his opposition to assuring that some parts are reserved for Indigenous peoples. Environmentalists say deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest levels in 11 years last year. Some European Union nations threatened not to ratify a long-negotiated free trade deal with a group of Latin countries that includes Brazil unless Brazil’s attitude changes. Mourao said Brazil has been unfairly criticized and said the Bolsonaro government was handed understaffed environmental agencies by the previous administration. Brazilian officials have said they are working to overcome Brazil’s current image as being indifferent to the Amazon and hostile to those who want to save it from destruction. 
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After months of touting an unproven anti-malaria drug as a treatment for the new coronavirus, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is turning himself into a test case live before millions of people as he swallows hydroxychloroquine pills on social media and encourages others to do the same.
Bolsonaro said this week that he tested positive for the virus but already felt better thanks to hydroxychloroquine. Hours later he shared a video of himself gulping down what he said was his third dose.  
“I trust hydroxychloroquine,” he said, smiling. “And you?”
On Wednesday, he was again extolling the drug’s benefits on Facebook, and claimed that his political opponents were rooting against it.  
A string of studies in Britain and the United States, as well as by the World Health Organization, have found chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine ineffective against COVID-19 and sometimes deadly because of their adverse side effects on the heart. Several studies were canceled early because of adverse effects.
U.S. President Donald Trump has promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 but chloroquine — a more toxic version of the drug, produced in Brazil — has been even more enthusiastically promoted by Bolsonaro, who contends the virus is largely unavoidable and, what is more, not a serious medical problem.  
“He has become the poster boy for curing COVID with hydroxychloroquine,” said Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia. “Chloroquine composes part of the denialist’s political strategy, with the objective of convincing voters that the pandemic’s effects can be easily controlled.”
Trump first mentioned hydroxychloroquine on March 19 during a pandemic briefing. Two days later, and a month after Brazil’s first confirmed case, Bolsonaro took one of his only big actions to fight the coronavirus. He announced he was directing the Brazilian army to ramp up output of chloroquine.  
The army churned out more than 2 million pills — 18 times the country’s normal annual production — even as Brazil’s intensive care medicine association recommended it not be prescribed and doctors mostly complied.  
The White House on May 31 said it had donated 2 million hydroxychloroquine pills to Brazil. Two weeks later the U.S. Food & Drug Administration revoked authorization for its emergency use, citing adverse side effects and saying it is unlikely to be effective.  
Brazil’s audit court on June 18 requested an investigation into alleged overbilling from local production of chloroquine, which it called unreasonable given the drug’s ineffectiveness and cited the FDA decision. Meantime, stocks of sedatives and other medications used in intensive care ran out in three states, according to a late-June report from Brazil’s council of state health secretariats.  
A former defense minister, Aldo Rebelo, told The Associated Press that he is concerned the army will be wrongly blamed for its involvement in production of a drug that most experts call ineffective against the coronavirus.
“All they did was to follow a legal order and produce the pills,” said Rebelo. “The problem is the health ministry and the decision that the president made.”
Brazil’s interim health minister, an army general with no health experience before April, endorsed chloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment days after assuming the post in May. His predecessor, a doctor and health consultant, quit rather than do so.  
As Brazil’s death toll continued to climb — nearing 68,000 on Wednesday, the second-most in the world — the health ministry distributed millions of chloroquine pills across Brazil’s vast territory. They have reached small cities with little or no health infrastructure to handle the pandemic and even a far-flung Indigenous territory.
“They’re trying to use the Indigenous people as guinea pigs to test chloroquine, use the Indigenous to advertise for chloroquine like Bolsonaro has done on his live broadcasts, like a poster boy for chloroquine,” Kretã Kaingang, an executive coordinator of the Indigenous organization APIB, said by phone from Brazil’s capital, Brasilia.  
In Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, three doctors treating COVID-19 in different hospitals told AP that patients routinely requested chloroquine as the pandemic spread, often citing Bolsonaro. In recent weeks, inquiries about the drug were less frequent after scientific doubts arose about its effectiveness, two physicians said.  
All say they worry Bolsonaro’s cheerleading will spur a new wave of desperate patients and relatives clamoring for chloroquine.  
“I tell them that I don’t prescribe it because there’s no study proving it improves patients, that there are important risks with the indiscriminate use of this drug,” said Dr. Natalia Magacho, an attending physician at the Hospital das Clinicas. “Some even get angry at first. But all prescriptions are the doctor’s responsibility and, as the risk outweighs the benefit, I don’t prescribe it.”
Most doctors oppose any protocols for the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, but some physicians continue to believe and have pressured local authorities to permit its use, said João Gabbardo, the former No. 2 official at Brazil’s health ministry.  
“This issue has been framed in a very polarizing, politicized manner,” said Gabbardo, who is now executive coordinator of Sao Paulo’s COVID-19 contingency center. “We are moving away from the discussion of science, of scientific evidence, toward a discussion of political positions.”
Bolsonaro’s supporters and aides have amplified his message. Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son and a federal lawmaker, said his father will beat the disease because he is taking the anti-malarial drug.  
“Treatment with chloroquine is rather effective at the start of the illness (and should be available for any Brazilian who needs it),” the younger Bolsonaro wrote on Twitter, without distinguishing between the two types of the drug.
Margareth Dalcolmo, a clinical researcher and prominent respiratory medicine professor at the state-funded Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, said she has no objection to Bolsonaro and his doctor agreeing on hydroxychloroquine treatment. The problem, she said, is broadcasting that information to an impressionable public that, if he recovers, will believe a potentially dangerous drug was responsible.  
Dalcolmo treats patients and contracted COVID-19 herself. Before she bounced back, some friends asked if she would authorize administration of either chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine were she unable to grant consent.
“Over my dead body, dear,” she said. “I said if I’m in a coma, intubated, none of you are authorized to put me on chloroquine. I would never authorize its use on me. And I haven’t used it on my dozens of patients.”
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Hospitals treating coronavirus patients in Bolivia’s two largest cities, La Paz and El Alto, are overwhelmed by the demand.La Paz Mayor, Luis Revilla, said, covid hospitals in the city are full. The La Portada hospital is full, emergency is full, as well as the Cotahuma hospital.Revilla said, they are calling for the Sur hospital to be up and running as soon as possible.A protesting nurse in La Paz said the hospital has been overwhelmed for several weeks. Mary Ticona said, “We collapsed about two months ago. We are attending to our people as we can, in stretchers, wheelchairs, however we can attend to them. We have collapsed.”Ticona is urging Bolivia’s national health officials to get involved and make coronavirus tests available for the hospital staff, so they can determine who is infected with the coronavirus.Ticona said, some co-workers are already showing symptoms of the virus, which is still surging in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.So far, Bolivia has confirmed more than 42,000 coronavirus cases and more than 1,500 deaths. 
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