RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil, one of the countries hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic in the world, provisionally banned entry into the country of foreign passengers coming from India, which has been registering successive records of deaths and coronavirus infections for several days.
The decree published in an extraordinary edition of the Official Gazette on Friday night was signed ten days after the National Health Regulator (ANVISA) recommended the restriction, given the need to prevent the arrival in Brazil a new and apparently more contagious variant of covid.
In addition to banning the disembarkation of passengers coming from the Asian country for 14 days, the decree renewed, for the same period, the ban on the entry of travelers coming from or having passed through the United Kingdom and South Africa, where two other covid variants have originated and are also of concern.
The restriction is intended to prevent the spread in Brazil of the coronavirus strain identified in India as B.1.617 and classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global concern.
This variant has spread rapidly in India, a country with about 22 million infected people and where deaths reach about 4,000 per day.
Brazil, the second country in the world in number of deaths from Covid-19 (432,628) and the third in number of cases (15.5 million) after the United States and India, faced a second wave of the more virulent and deadly epidemic earlier this year due to the spread of the variant known as Brazilian (P.1).
Although infections remain high, the number of deaths has been falling slowly and gradually, to a weekly average of 1,931 deaths per day on Friday, after the country recorded more than 4,000 deaths per day in April.
The decree restricting the entry of passengers from India establishes as exceptions Brazilians, foreigners with residence in the country, relatives of Brazilians, professionals on a mission for international organizations, and diplomats.
These passengers will be allowed to disembark as long as they present an examination indicating that they are not infected within 72 days before the flight and commit themselves to a 14-day quarantine.
Cargo flights were also exempted.