Brazil’s Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced Tuesday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus after being hospitalized for possible symptoms on Monday.

“It came back positive,” he said in an address on Brazilian television, according to The Guardian.

Bolsonaro’s confirmed infection comes as he has faced widespread criticism for not taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously and suggesting that he would easily beat the virus if he contracted it due to his “athlete’s background.”

A judge ordered him to wear a mask in public last month after Bolsonaro was seen frequently disobeying an order mandating masks for the general public put in place in April.

His country, meanwhile, has become the second-hardest-hit of all nations by the coronavirus, behind only the U.S., with more than 1.6 million total infections and 65,000 confirmed deaths from the virus.

“The virus has arrived and we are fighting it and soon it will pass,” Bolsonaro said in a nationwide address in March, after previously describing it as a “fantasy.”

The Brazilian leader previously faced a coronavirus scare in March when he was tested for the virus days after visiting President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and meeting with Trump. That test later came back negative.

Updated at 11:54 a.m.