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Brazil hospital chain hid COVID-19 deaths,

whistleblowers' lawyer tells Senate
Anthony Boadle

4-5 minutos

Tue Sep 28, 2021 / 7:20 PM EDT

BRASILIABRASILIA (Reuters) -A Brazilian hospital chain tested

unproven drugs on elderly COVID-19 patients without their
knowledge as part of an e�ort to validate President Jair
Bolsonaro's preferred 'miracle cure,' a lawyer for
whistleblowing doctors told senators on Tuesday.

At least nine people died of COVID-19 during the trials at the

Prevent Senior hospital chain from March to April 2020, but
their charts were altered to hide the cause of death, lawyer
Bruna Morato told a Senate inquiry.

Prevent Senior rejected the accusations as unfounded and said

it had "rigorously reported" all deaths. It added in a statement
that 7% of the 56,000 COVID-19 patients it treated had died, a
better record that other public and private hospitals.

Pedro Batista, owner and executive director of the hospital

chain, acknowledged in testimony to the Senate inquiry last
week that patients' charts where altered to remove any
reference to COVID-19 after they had been hospitalized for
two weeks, saying they were no longer a risk of contagion.

He denied testing unproven drugs on patients without their

knowledge, saying doctors prescribed them when patients
asked.

"It's the doctor who prescribes any medicine and, at the time,
everyone recalls comments from (President Bolsonaro) and
other in�uential people, so there were a lot of patients
demanding prescriptions," Batista told the senators.

On Tuesday, Morato, representing 12 doctors employed at

Prevent Senior, said the company threatened and �red doctors
who disagreed with a predetermined "COVID kit" that included
hydroxychloroquine, erythromycin and ivermectin. There is no
scienti�c evidence that those drugs are bene�cial in the
treatment of COVID-19.

"Very vulnerable elderly patients were told there was a good

treatment, but they did not know they were being used as
guinea pigs," Morato, the whistleblowers' attorney, told
senators investigating Brazil's handling of the coronavirus
pandemic.

She said doctors were told not to explain the treatment to the
patients or their relatives.

"The purpose was to show that there was an e�ective

treatment against COVID-19," Morato said.

She said the hospital had an agreement to help the Bolsonaro

government, which was touting the unproven drugs as an
e�ective treatment against the virus that would protect
Brazilians from contagion if they went back to work.

Prevent Senior denied it had ever dismissed doctors who

disagreed with the treatment and questioned why the lawyer
did not name the anonymous accusers.

The Health Ministry did not reply to a request for comment. It

is unclear how much the government knew about the alleged
trials.

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Bolsonaro again

praised "early treatment" of COVID-19 via o�-label use of
unspeci�ed drugs, claiming that science would some day
vindicate their use against the coronavirus.
The pandemic has killed nearly 600,000 Brazilians in the
world's second-deadliest outbreak outside the United States.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and

Stephen Coates)