Brazil ag minister and Bolsonaro’s son test positive for COVID-19

September 24, 2021

By Gabriel Araujo and Pedro Fonseca

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Brazilian Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina and President Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo announced on Friday that they have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing to three the number of close aides to the president recently diagnosed with the virus.

The news comes three days after Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga announced that he had tested positive while on a trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Queiroga remained behind in the United States to quarantine.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is a congressman, was part of his father’s delegation to New York. He tweeted that he had tested positive for COVID-19, adding that he had been vaccinated with the first dose of the Pfizer shot.

Cristina, who was not part of the delegation that visited New York, received her diagnosis one week after meeting with G20 ministers in Italy.

“I have tested positive for #Covid19. I am fine. I have cancelled all my in-person meetings and will remain isolated during the medical guidance period,” the agriculture minister said in a Twitter post. Cristina was vaccinated against COVID-19.

President Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic who claims not to have taken the shot himself, said during his weekly live stream on Thursday that he knew two vaccinated people in Brasilia who had contracted the virus recently, without naming them.

“Today it came to my knowledge that two well-known people here in Brasilia have contracted the virus. I have spoken to both of them on the phone”, said the far-right president, who is in isolation since he came back from New York due to Queiroga’s diagnosis.

(Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia; editing by Philippa Fletcher, Jason Neely and Mark Porter)

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