Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday renewed his call to roll back the restrictions on movement and activity enacted to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

During the swearing in of oncologist Nelson Teich as the new Health Ministry, Bolsonaro said, “This fight to begin to open retailing is a risk I am running, because if (the pandemic) gets worse, it falls entirely on me. Now, I think, and it’s something many people already know, (retailing) has to open”,

On Thursday, the President sacked Luiz Henrique Mandett from the position of health minister.

Mandetta took to his official Twitter account and said, “I just heard from President Jair Bolsonaro the notice of my resignation from the Ministry of Health”.

But Bolsonaro, who has railed at state governors for taking aggressive steps to slow the contagion, dismisses the need to shut down much of the economy for a “measly flu”.

Earlier, the Brazilian leader had said that Teich agreed with him on a plan to “gradually open” the country, the latter did not mention the issue on Friday.

Teich said that dealing with a new virus required the formation of inter-agency task forces and assured Brazil’s 27 state governments that he would work closely with them in crafting responses to the crisis.

Also on Friday, Sau Paulo Governor Joao Doria announced that quarantine measures would remain in effect in all 645 municipalities in the country’s most populous state until May 10.

The state accounts for 853 of Brazil’s more than 1,900 deaths from coronavirus and has 11,068 confirmed infections out of a national total of more than 30,000.

The number of new cases continues to rise and some of the state’s hospitals were “on the edge” of collapse, Doria said.

Nearly 2,500 people in Sao Paulo have been hospitalized for coronavirus and almost half of those patients are in serious condition.

Earlier, authorities have predicted the peak of the outbreak in Brazil will come at the end of April or beginning of May.

The right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro had been downplaying the risk of the virus outbreak in his country by asking people to return to normalcy.

According to the World Health Organization Friday, many countries would likely follow China in revising up their death counts once they start getting the coronavirus crisis under control.

Wuhan added 1,290 deaths to its number of deaths, raising the total to 3,869, and added a further 325 cases, bringing the number of infections to 50,333.

Meanwhile,  the number of deaths linked to the novel coronavirus worldwide has passed 150,000, according a Johns Hopkins University tally.

(With inputs from agency)