Minister Luís Roberto Barroso, from the Federal Supreme Court, instituted the health passport for foreigners upon arrival in Brazil. The decision, however, allows travelers from countries with a low supply of vaccines to enter without proof.
According to the order published by Barroso on Saturday 11, travelers who come from countries with a low supply of vaccines must comply with a quarantine before entering Brazil. The exception includes countries where covid-19 cases have started to rise recently.
South Africa, for example, has only 26% of the population with a complete vaccination cycle. The country is experiencing an explosion of new infections after the Ômicron variant of the coronavirus was discovered in its territory.
In addition, along with five other destinations (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland), South Africa is on a list of countries facing restrictions applied by other nations to try to contain the spread of the Ômicron variant.
This new strain was discovered last month exactly in the region where these six countries are located. Tests by South Africa’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases revealed that the pathogen has been circulating in that nation since at least 8 November.
Among the five, Malawi has the worst proportion of fully vaccinated (3.2%) and Lesotho the best: almost 29%. The information is from the Our World In Data website, linked to the University of Oxford.
A variant Ômicron no Brazil
Since it was discovered, the new strain has already appeared in seven people in Brazil: four in São Paulo, two in the Federal District and two in Rio Grande do Sul.
Source: Revista Oeste
