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They also want him inducted into the nation’s official pantheon of heroes, Adalberto Cândido, 85, the sailor’s only living son, said in an interview in Sao Joao de Meriti, on Rio’s outskirts.

Interviews with the 18 people Rodrigues registered to vote one afternoon in Sao Joao de Meriti, a rough commuter town on the outskirts of Rio, showed a strong edge for Lula.

“Forty percent of our staff is on sick leave,” Marcia Fernandes Lucas, health secretary for the municipality of Sao Joao de Meriti, in Rio’s metropolitan region, told the AP in her office.

At the municipal hospital of Sao Joao de Meriti, a city in Rio de Janeiro’s metropolitan area, the ICU ward is almost full, with many patients sharing space and oxygen bottles while being treated.

Marcos dos Santos Jr has counted 13 deaths from Covid-19 among Brazilian families he is close to in São João de Meriti, a satellite town of Rio de Janeiro.