By Vinod Sreeharsha

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Covid-19 has killed more than 130,000 in Brazil, second only to the U.S., and hammered the economy.

Still, the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has lashed out at governors who ordered businesses to close and clashed with health experts over social-distancing measures, is more popular than ever.

With millions of Brazilians unable to work, Mr. Bolsonaro has since March vowed to keep Latin America's largest economy alive. Breaking with earlier promises to tightly control spending, his government in April began funneling generous cash payments to millions of poor to help them ride out the economic storm.

Six months after the pandemic began to batter this country, the president's approach of playing down the disease while raising public spending appears to be paying off, even in regions where support for his leftist rivals has been historically rock solid. The shift could augur well for Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies ahead of November municipal elections and the presidential vote in 2022.

In a recent Datafolha poll, 37% percent of respondents approved of the Bolsonaro administration, the best numbers the president has logged in his 20 months in office. That is up from 32% in June when more than 1,200 people were dying of Covid-19 daily versus about 700 per day in the past week. Yet majority approval eludes him, with many Brazilians still skeptical of a man long seen as a demagogue and rabble rouser with little interest in the working poor.

Still, the Datafolha polls shows that 47% don't blame him for the fast-rising death toll, even though Mr. Bolsonaro compared the disease to "a little flu" and forced out two health ministers as the disease was spreading fast.

Mr. Bolsonaro has calculated that, with the economy sinking, voters would remember that he had fought to keep people working, thus softening the political cost, analysts said. While the president has minimized the perils of the pandemic -- even in July when he said he too had tested positive -- he has notably muted his public belligerence, giving fewer combative interviews and curtailing his public criticism of the supreme court and other institutions.

"Bolsonaro's popularity grew for two reasons: one was the emergency cash and the other is that he kept his mouth shut," said Renato Meirelles, president of Locomotiva, a research firm focused on the country's working classes. "In a very skillful and shrewd manner, Bolsonaro found a way to avoid taking any responsibility and incurring a political cost for the economic crisis caused by the pandemic."

More than 67 million people, 32% of the population, have received monthly checks providing between $113 to $226, a program that has cost $38 billion through August. The aid, part of the biggest financial pandemic crisis package in Latin America, has helped poverty fall by 21% -- or 13.1 million people -- this year, said Marcelo Neri, an economist and poverty expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a research institution in Rio.

In one of Rio's biggest slums, Complexo do Alemão, Elaine Cirino, a 35-year-old who for years has toiled in the informal economy, said the aid is helping her and her four children survive at a time when there is no work.

"If he continues this, he has my vote," she said. "People on my street like him a lot."

Luis Jose, 50, who also lives in Complexo and works at a recreation center, said he didn't fault the president for Covid-19's hit to Brazil. "If anyone is to blame, it's us," he said, referring to people who didn't avoid crowds.

Mr. Jose instead might support Mr. Bolsonaro if he starts addressing social problems in the community. "I didn't vote for him [in the last election] but I believe in him," he said.

Another Complexo resident Catia Maria Pontes Ferreira, 50, said she doesn't trust the government and thinks Mr. Bolsonaro is only providing aid to get votes.

"This government worries me a lot because our lives are in their hands," she said. "He's not doing anything for any of us for free."

The federal program has helped the administration particularly in the northeast, a poor region that strongly supports the leftist Workers' Party, which won elections with the help of generous cash handout program called Bolsa Familia. Now, Mr. Bolsonaro's emergency handouts show that those rejecting his presidency have fallen from 52% to 35% in the northeast, and even more so among the lowest socioeconomic group, says Datafolha. The aid is substantial in impoverished regions, amounting to 8.6% of output in Maranhao state from April to August.

The policy runs in contrast to the policies Mr. Bolsonaro and his economy minister, Paulo Guedes, carried out before Covid-19, when they pushed through a pension overhaul, privatized companies and prepared for a tax overhaul.

Many economists agree with the administration's pivot due to the economic crisis, with unemployment growing and output sputtering.

"The current circumstances require these sorts of measures be put in place and sustained," said Monica de Bolle, a Brazilian economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The government has cut the size of the emergency handouts in half this month, but Mr. Bolsonaro wants to expand other cash-transfer initiatives the government has, namely Bolsa Familia. Mr. Bolsonaro has also traveled to four northeast states since July to inaugurate public-works projects. Politicians there are increasingly looking to ally with him ahead of November's vote.

"People see him now helping them, and so they think he's doing a good job," said Aldenise Maria da Silva, who lives in the northeast with her husband, Jose Inacio da Silva, a Bolsonaro supporter.

The new spending has economists concerned about Brazil's fiscal health. Moody's estimated in a report last week that government debt will rise to about 95% of GDP in 2020 from 76% in 2019. "Calls to expand social programs increase the risk of breaching the spending ceiling and hindering debt stabilization," the report said.

Despite criticism of the costs, many social-policy experts in Brazil said the assistance was needed after tens of millions of informal workers lost their work as businesses shut down to meet local social-isolation requirements. A poll in late August by Locomotiva, the research firm focused on the working classes, found that 92% of respondents used the cash to buy basic food staples and groceries.

"The emergency grant was fundamental in preventing Brazil from social convulsion and a social collapse," said Mr. Meirelles of Locomotiva.