The drastic step came as right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly downplayed the gravity of the pandemic that has killed 250,000 Brazilians, renewed his attacks on state governors for destroying jobs with lockdowns.
“The lockdown will start today and be total, it will be 24-hours a day,” said a press aide for the federal district’s Governor Ibaneis Rocha, confirming that an initial 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. lockdown had been extended due to the health crisis.
Shops, pharmacies, gas stations, churches and funeral parlors will remain open, she said, but everything else will shut down, especially bars and restaurants blamed for increased contagion during the end of year and Carnival holidays.
Intensive care wards in Brasilia, the third-largest city in Brazil with 3 million inhabitants, are as full as they were at the peak of the pandemic last year, with more than 80% of the beds occupied, the health department said.
The situation is as bad or worse in cities across Brazil, with intensive care beds in the capitals of 17 of Brazil’s 26 states this week reaching the most critical level since the pandemic began a year ago, according to a report by biomedical center Fiocruz.
Bolsonaro, who lives and works in Brasilia, said governors imposing restrictions were doing Brazilians a disservice.
“What the people most want is to work,” he said on a visit to northeastern Brazil on Friday, one day after Brazil recorded its second-worst daily death toll. He threatened to cut off federal emergency pandemic assistance to states resorting to lockdowns.
“From now on, governors who close down their states will have to provide for their own emergency aid,” Bolsonaro said.
