“We are in one of those tragic moments in history when millions of people pay a high price for having an unprepared and psychopathic leader in charge of a nation,” João Doria said in an interview with CNN on Monday.
Doria said that a large part of the deaths from the virus in Brazil could have been prevented if Bolsonaro had “acted with the responsibility that the position gives him”.
He added that Bolsonaro made “unbelievable mistakes, the biggest of which was having a political dispute with the governors who are trying to protect the population”.
Bolsonaro has repeatedly opposed blockades and restrictive measures and criticized governors and mayors for implementing them.
The governor added that he faces the biggest challenge of his life as governor of the largest state in Brazil, and that he needs to restructure the health system in “record time” and look for ways to mitigate the economic crisis that hit the country during the pandemic.
Doria also spoke about the serious situation of São Paulo hospitals and ICUs, saying that the number of ICU beds has already tripled and that this month they will open 12 field hospitals in the state.
The Covid-19 crisis in Brazil has never been worse.
Almost all Brazilian states have an ICU occupancy of 80% or more, according to a recent CNN analysis of state data. As of Friday, 16 of the 26 states were at 90% or more, which means that these health systems have collapsed or are at imminent risk of doing so.
And as of Friday, less than 10 million people in the country of about 220 million had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to federal health data. Only 1.57% of the population was fully vaccinated.
This is the result of a slow implementation program that has been affected by delays. During the announcement of its distribution plan in early February, the government promised that about 46 million doses of vaccine would be available in March. He has been repeatedly forced to decrease that number, and it is now estimated that only 26 million doses are available by the end of the month.
Doria said that 90% of vaccines in Brazil are produced by the Butantan Institute of São Paulo – linked to the São Paulo government – and that by the end of August they will have made available 100 million vaccines across the country.
“It is still not enough,” he said, adding that the federal government started buying vaccines in March, while the state of São Paulo started in April last year.
CNN’s Matt Rivers contributed to this report.