BRASILIA, Nov 17 — President Jair Bolsonaro, who has barely been seen in public since failing to win re-election, is holed up in his official residence because of a skin infection on his leg, a newspaper said Wednesday.

"It is a health issue. He has a leg injury, a skin infection,” Vice President Hamilton Mourao told O Globo on the sidelines of an event at the Planalto presidential palace.

"He cannot wear pants. You want him to come here wearing Bermuda shorts?” Mourao was quoted as saying.

Bolsonaro’s office did not respond to an AFP query seeking comment on his health.

Since losing the October 30 runoff election to leftist icon and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the far-right Bolsonaro has appeared in public only once — two days after the vote to make brief remarks in which he did not concede defeat or congratulate Lula.

So it has been two weeks since he left his Alvorada residence, which is about three miles (five kilometers) from Planalto, where his offices are.

Bolsonaro is skipping the COP27 climate talks in Egypt and the G20 meeting in Indonesia.

Bolsonaro has also been absent from social media, where he was active throughout his term in office, especially with a Facebook live stream on Thursdays.

Since Bolsonaro’s defeat at the polls, supporters dressed in the yellow and gold of the national flag have demonstrated outside military bases to urge the armed forces to intervene and prevent Lula from taking power in January. It will Lula’s his third term after ruling from 2003 to 2010.

On Tuesday, which was a holiday in Brazil, several thousand such demonstrators turned out. On a normal day it is just several dozen hard core supporters of Bolsonaro that show up to protest. — AFP