Brazil SC opens investigation against President Bolsonaro for linking COVID vaccine and AIDS

Brasilia: Brazil's Supreme Court has opened an inquiry against President Jair Bolsonaro for the comments made by him in which he wrongly claimed that COVID-19 vaccines may increase the chance of contracting Aids, the BBC reported on Saturday.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Mr Bolsonaro had "used the modus operandi of mass dissemination schemes in social networks" which makes a case for further investigation against him, instructing Brazil's top prosecutor, Augusto Aras, to try to investigate whether the president's comments are somehow linked to a group of his supporters, known in local media as the Office of Hate, who are accused of spreading misinformation throughout the pandemic and currently also under investigation for the large-scale production of fake news.

The comments made by President Bolsonaro were made during a social media livestream in October. His comments had led to him being temporarily banned from Facebook and YouTube under their fake news policies.

Mr Bolsonaro has time and again cast doubts over the effectiveness of vaccines right from the outset and has even refused to get himself vaccinated while defending his statement saying that he was simply quoting from an article he had read somewhere.

The embattled president is already facing a separate inquiry into his handling of the COVID pandemic which saw Brazil becoming one of the worst affected country in the world with thousands of deaths from the virus. (UNI)