The director-president of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency), Antonio Barra Torres, demanded this Friday (26) that the government start to demand a vaccination certificate against Covid for entry into Brazil.
The measure, which dislikes President Jair Bolsonaro, prevents the country from becoming an attraction for anti-vaccine tourism, Barra said in an interview with sheet.
“To avoid that in the winter period in the northern hemisphere, where people normally travel on vacation, and we also have the issue of the extremely valued dollar and the euro, we will not have anti-vaccine tourism here in Brazil,” said Barra.
Anvisa proposed to the government, on the 12th, the adoption of a vaccination passport for those who cross the Brazilian border by land or to dispense with a five-day quarantine after international flights.
Since December 2020, the government demands the presentation of the RT-PCR test with a negative result, but does not require quarantine, despite Anvisa suggesting this measure for months.
Anvisa’s idea is to prevent the increase in Covid-19 cases registered in Europe, among other places, from also occurring in Brazil.
The agency also suggested this Friday to bar travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland (Eswatini), Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe to prevent the spread in Brazil of a new, potentially more transmissible variant of Covid-19, B.1.1. 529.
Barra said that the agency is not aware of suspected cases in Brazil of the new variant.
The Ministries of the Civil House, Justice, Health and Infrastructure will decide whether or not to accept Anvisa’s suggestions for sanitary border control. The agency only issues an opinion.
“I have not yet been aware of the position of minister Marcelo Queiroga (Health), but he is certainly a very important interlocutor,” said Barra.
Barra and Bolsonaro talked about the vaccination passport this week. The president raised concerns about the impact on the economy, according to the head of Anvisa.
“The president always emphasizes the independence of the agency’s work. Then with supporters he emphasized once again the independence of the agency’s work. And we hope that in the next few hours we will have a position that, in fact, is not his, it is his ministers accepting the technical notes that we send,” said Barra.
The president of Anvisa said that the ideal is that the suggestions are accepted in the shortest time possible, even though the law does not impose or set a deadline for this. “For us, we have already consolidated what we understand to be necessary. The less time it takes to be implemented, in our understanding, the better.”
The Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres, has already used a denial argument to say that he is against charging those who arrive in Brazil for vaccination. “You don’t need to. It doesn’t prevent the transmission of the disease,” he said on Thursday (25), in the first public statement by a minister about the agency’s request.
Barra minimized Torres’ speech. “There is a part that is correct, when it says that the vaccine does not prevent [a transmissão], it just isn’t complete. Because, in fact, no vaccine prevents anything 100%, not even the one the minister took when he was a child. But there is a percentage protection considered significant.”
In the reading of members of Anvisa, the government must accept the entry restrictions of travelers who have passed through the six countries with registrations of the new variant. The “vaccination passport” is a delicate issue.
Torres adds that the measures to block flights from countries in Africa and require a vaccination passport will not necessarily stop the virus, but alleviate the problem.
“We have to prepare as soon as possible and strengthen, close. It is not closing Brazil. Anvisa, on the contrary, is not proposing to keep the border closed, it is proposing that it be opened with the regulation. The person proves that he is vaccinated, if not proving can be questioned and deported. We are not proposing to close, we are proposing to increase security,” he said.
This Friday, Bolsonaro ruled out closing airports. For him, it would be ineffective to prevent the arrival of international flights and repeated that it is necessary to live with Covid.
“You will not seal [a entrada do vírus], boy. What is this madness? I mean, the airport closed, the virus doesn’t enter? The virus is already in here,” he said.
Anvisa’s technical note proposes that the vaccine be applied 14 days before embarking on an international flight to Brazil or the person crossing the land border. The agency argues that it follows guidance from countries like the United States, Canada, Chile, among others.
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