COVID-19 strikes Brazil's Congress as third senator dies
MARCH 19, 20211:15 PMUPDATED 28 MINUTES AGO
By Anthony Boadle
4 MIN READ
BRASILIA (Reuters) - A third senator has died of COVID-19 in Brazil, raising questions around precautions taken in the country’s Congress where as many as one-in-three lawmakers has been infected with the virus devastating Latin America’s largest nation.
Senator Major Olimpio, a former policeman who backed and later fell out with far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, was declared brain dead on Thursday by doctors at a Sao Paulo hospital where he had been in intensive care for three weeks.
The two oldest senators in Congress, aged 87 and 83, also succumbed to COVID-19. But the death of Olimpio, just 58 and the senator who won the most votes in the 2018 election, shocked Brazilians and the legislature.
The lower chamber, where 21 staffers have died of COVID-19, according to the employee union, tightened access on Thursday by allowing lawmakers just one staffer in their offices and declaring a return to fully remote voting.
Brazil had its second deadliest day on Thursday, with 2,724 lives lost to COVID-19, just two days after a record 2,841 coronavirus deaths.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-congress/covid-19-strikes-brazils-congress-as-third-senator-dies-idUSKBN2BB26K
