At a tense Cabinet meeting on Saturday in the Brazilian president's official residence, Jair Bolsonaro found himself isolated.

The far-right leader convened the emergency meeting in Brasilia's modernist Alvorada Palace to resolve a dispute with Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who publicly opposed the president's calls to loosen quarantine restrictions for Brazil's 210 million people.

But, with Mandetta unwilling to back down, Bolsonaro's closest aides refused to support his plan to relax coronavirus rules to keep the economy going, according to two sources with knowledge of the meeting.