With the end of the year and New Year’s Eve parties approaching, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) highlights the need for travelers to present a passport for vaccination against the new coronavirus to enter Brazil. In the Covid-19 Observatory Bulletin, released this Friday (26), specialists also defend the mandatory requirement of a health passport for access in public places and testing of all people who want to come to Brazilian territory.
TO CNN, the researcher at Fiocruz, Carlos Machado, stated that there is concern that unvaccinated people choose Brazil as a holiday destination.
“The health passport is an additional measure to protect the population from the arrival of travelers. Fiocruz’s fear is that Brazil will become a tourist destination for unvaccinated people. Even though there are European countries that have advanced in vaccination, many do not reach 70% coverage and in others with very low vaccination”, says Machado.
According to the new edition of the Bulletin, there was a further drop in pandemic indicators between the 7th and 20th of November. Across Brazil, a daily average of 9,800 cases of the disease and 230 deaths from the virus were reported. The values show a daily reduction of 1% of infected and 1.2% of deaths.
A decline in the lethality rate was also observed, which was in the range of 3% and is at 2.3%, close to international standards. Despite the falls analyzed, the researchers claim that the time is for caution and warn about the new outbreak in European countries.
The current situation in European countries is called by the Foundation the “unvaccinated pandemic”. This is because the increase in the number of deaths and cases of Covid-19 is registered, mainly, in regions where vaccination coverage is not progressing. In addition, most admissions are for people who have not received any dose of the vaccine.
“Vaccines do not completely block transmission, but they contribute to reducing critical and severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Therefore, it is important to continue advancing so that the population completes the vaccination schedule in order to continue increasing vaccination coverage”, emphasize the scientists.
Another fear of Fiocruz is that new variants will spread in these countries, in addition to the great international mobility. The alert is essential for South America, according to the researchers, since the moment is of low transmission in the region.
“It is important to maintain good sanitary control for travelers and provide for entry restrictions, whether due to the requirement for a vaccination passport, or negative tests, as is already being done by several other countries”, they state in the Bulletin.
The new strains are a reality. This Friday afternoon (26), the Ômicron variant, discovered in the African country Botswana, was classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a variant of concern. The decision came after an urgent meeting called by the organization’s working group on Covid-19.
The new variant is related to an abrupt increase in cases in recent weeks in South Africa, a region with low vaccination coverage, according to the Corona-omic Network, linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI).
Ômicron has overlapped the predominance of the Delta variant, which until then accounted for the majority of cases in the African country.
The Fiocruz Bulletin also cites data from MonitoraCovid-19, generated by the state health departments. At the moment, more than 305 million doses were applied in Brazil, which represents 74.1% of the partially vaccinated population, with the first dose of the immunizing agent.
Regarding the complete vaccine schedule, 61.1% of Brazilians were immunized with a second dose or a single dose, while 6.9% of the population received a booster dose against the virus.
Sixteen states have more than 70% of the population vaccinated with the first dose and nineteen have more than 50% with the second dose. Regarding the complete vaccination schedule, São Paulo was the only state that surpassed the mark of 70% of the population vaccinated with the second dose or the single dose.
Mato Grosso do Sul and Espírito Santo are the states with the highest percentage of application of the booster dose. Mato Grosso has 11.3% of vaccinated with the third dose and Espírito Santo has 10.7% of the population with the booster
Reference: CNN Brasil
