The favorite candidate for Mayor of São Paulo, Celso Russomanno, said on Tuesday that homeless people may be more resistant to covid-19 because “they live on the streets all time and have no way to bath”.
Russomanno, who leads the polling polls in São Paulo for November’s municipal elections, said that Covid-19 cases have been “one-off” among homeless and drug addicts living in the “Cracolândia” region, one of the main South American drug use points.
“Perhaps they are more resistant than we are, because they live together all the time on the streets, they cannot shower every day,” said the candidate in a meeting at the Associação Comercial de São Paulo, quoted by G1 news portal.
Russomanno, running for the conservative Republican Party, also criticized the quarantines imposed by the São Paulo City Hall in conjunction with the state government, stressing that, after the first thirty days, the isolation should have been “vertical”, to avoid the businesses closures and job destruction.
“Now we will need to fix this and it will not be easy,” added the candidate.
This view of the pandemic is also defended by the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, with whom Russomanno shares part of his political agenda, especially with regard to public security.
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