Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Without a vaccine passport, Brazil has its doors open to the virus

News of the new variant of the coronavirus caused slight agitation for a few days. They matter less than Carnival cancellations. What was done about it?

The importation of old or new viruses remains almost free in Brazil. Anvisa and TCU recommended the requirement of a vaccine passport. European countries adopt the compulsory vaccination of their citizens or have started to discuss the hypothesis.

Airports and ports are open to friendly nations that charge vaccination certificates for people arriving from Brazil (and those who don’t charge us either). We don’t care much, maybe not even if another wave of disgrace comes. With the epidemic killing loose in April, the subject was not raised. We are “good” with the virus, apart from the relatives and friends of the dead and victims of sequelae — health, psychological, social, a subject for which we also pay little attention.

This Wednesday, the TCU (Court of Accounts of the Union) recommended that the federal government demand vaccination certificates from those who come to Brazil from abroad and that they explain the reason for not doing so. There were those who thought in the TCU to force the government to impose the restriction, an idea that was overturned, thank goodness, because the TCU cannot govern or legislate. But TCU did the right thing.

Last week, Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) recommended that vaccination against Covid-19 become mandatory for anyone wanting to enter Brazil, which it did through two technical notes. For those days, Jair Bolsonaro wanted to overturn the few restrictions that exist.

Senator Omar Aziz (PSD-AM), who chaired the Covid CPI and now chairs the Parliamentary Front of the Pandemic Observatory, said on Monday that he would present a bill to give legal weight to more Anvisa determinations, perhaps among them guidelines about mandatory vaccination.

That was all, apart from protests from some health secretaries and lots of scientists and health professionals, who spoke again inglorious about the subject, about the need for tests and tracking (who passed which virus to whom). Perhaps the omicron is causing some state and local governments to review the release of masks.

Will demanding vaccine against Covid to enter Brazil change the current way of the epidemic here? Probably not. It can help stave off new doom or dampen further influxes of old viruses. We don’t need more patients and more defilements—even just one. We need even less foolish or perverse people, people who do not take the vaccine on purpose, irresponsible people who can be lured to a country with open ports for the coronavirus.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union needed to discuss mandatory vaccination for its citizens. Austria has already decided it will oblige. Greece will fine anyone who doesn’t get the vaccine. Germany’s new prime minister, Olaf Sholz, is expected to propose the measure to the German parliament.

Old variants still kill a lot. The omicron could be a false alarm (it will take us weeks to know), but no one can predict whether a future theta or psi will dodge the vaccine and kill off in droves.

Is it any use complaining? Recklessness and carelessness in health, even more in the face of an imponderable risk, although with a potentially catastrophic consequence, may be greater than the inability to save for the future (for those who can and for financially impatient or profligate people). Collateral damage, however, is deadly and far more extensive. This seemingly incorrigible attitude of many people wins support and encouragement when the government is deadly.