Brasilia, March 24 (RHC)-- Successive social protests in Brazil show that the political authority of ultra-right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is suffering a mortal blow, local media reported on Monday.

For five consecutive nights, Brazil has shown its anger at President Jair Bolsonaro by pot-banging from windows and balconies.   The anger was unleashed after the president downplayed the importance of the crisis the country is going through to contain the numbers of contagion and deaths from COVID-19.

To date, the Latin American giant has registered 1,128 cases of coronavirus and 18 deaths. "It is expected that by the end of opening the public health system will collapse," the country's health authorities recently reported in a statement.

In that context, Jair Bolsonaro continues to minimize the impact of COVID-19, even though a score of ministers and other officials who traveled with him to the United States are infected with the new coronavirus.  "The governors of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are irresponsible," Bolsonaro said after both cities announced quarantine and large-scale closures.

"They only create a climate of terror," he added, rejecting criticism of his administration's response.  "I'm the team manager and the team is playing very well," he said, as the death and infection figures soar each day in the country.  

"Scientists around the world are struggling to find a treatment for Covid-19. Meanwhile, in Brazil, the incompetence of the current government is incurable," the conservative newspaper Estado de São Paulo lamented on Friday.