Brazilian politician’s cunning plan to fight Covid: spray hand gel from planes

A Brazilian politician has suggested using helicopters and planes to spray his town with hand sanitizer in a desperate and futile bid to obliterate the coronavirus from above.

The mystifying proposal was floated in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on Monday, as Brazil wrestles with the deadliest phase of its 13-month outbreak and the country’s Covid death toll rose to nearly 280,000.

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During an assembly of local politicians in the tourist town of Canela, councillor Alberi Dias wondered if the aerial deployment of alcohol gel hand rub might help.

“We’ve got lots of business people here who own helicopters and planes … I don’t know if there’s a liquid version of alcohol gel but I think spraying it would be a good idea because the virus is in the air. It’s like something from another world,” Dias said, according to the news website Metrópoles.

“They use planes to spray crops,” mused the 50-year-old politician, whose state is currently being pummeled by a soaring number of infections and deaths. “Perhaps it’s a good idea because alcohol gel does no harm.”

One fellow councillor reportedly laughed at the proposition made by Dias, whose official website carries the slogan: “When politics is conducted by upstanding men, the people will only profit.”

Social media was left in stitches, with many wondering what would happen if Canela’s smokers decided to light up. “This guy’s ready to be health minister,” tweeted one jokester in reference to President Jair Bolsonaro’s decision to axe his widely derided health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, on whose 10-month watch more than 260,000 Brazilians died of Covid-19.

Bolsonaro announced Pazuello’s departure on Monday evening, telling supporters his replacement had a much better grasp of health issues. Few believe the switch will significantly alter Brazil’s anti-scientific response to the epidemic, given Bolsonaro’s longstanding opposition to containment measures such as social distancing and masks.

The Brazilian president has yet to suggest showering cities with sanitizer but Bolsonaro has repeatedly pushed unproven remedies such as hydroxychloroquine and the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, despite there being no scientific basis for their use.

On Monday one Brazilian doctor was reported to have turned down the offer to become Bolsonaro’s new health minister on the grounds that she believed in science. A second doctor, who accepted the job, offered scant hope that Brazil’s health crisis would ease anytime soon. “I don’t have a magic wand,” Marcelo Queiroga told reporters on Tuesday.