⁍ Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday it would be easier and cheaper to invest in a cure for Covid-19 rather than a vaccine.

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⁍ Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the gravity of the virus and continues to promote the anti-malarial chloroquine as a cure.

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⁍ In Brazil, more than 150,000 people have died due to COVID-19, the world’s second highest death toll behind the United States.

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– Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro says it would be “cheaper and easier to invest in a cure rather than a vaccine” to stop the spread of a virus that has killed more than 150,000 people in the country. Bolsonaro, who recovered from the Covid-19 virus in July but has continued to promote the use of an anti-malarial drug called chloroquine, told supporters in Brasilia on Monday that “everything indicates that everyone that took one of these three alternatives early on was cured,” Reuters reports. He did not provide any scientific evidence to back up his claim. Bolsonaro’s comments come as a political battle heats up between the president and Joao Doria, the governor of Sao Paulo— Brazil’s most populous and economically advanced state. Doria, who is widely expected to run against Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections, has positioned his state to get early access to China’s Sinovac vaccine, which he plans to roll out in a mass inoculation plan by mid-December. Bolsonaro last week said the federal government would not buy the Chinese vaccine, contradicting his own health minister who had said the drug would be part of the country’s immunization plan.