RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The U.S. State Department and health authorities (CDC) raised one step in the risk rating for travel to Peru, which was one of the safest countries in South America in recent months along with Paraguay and since a few weeks ago Argentina.
Peru was in category 2, where travelers are advised to “exercise more caution” than usual. It is now in category 3: “reconsider your trip”.
Read also: Check out our coverage on Peru
Travel alerts directly influence the plans and decisions of many travelers – primarily business and corporate travelers and leisure travelers – and are usually based on security threats. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they are guided more by the health analysis carried out by the CDC (U.S. health authorities) in each country.
Alerts are updated regularly, although without set deadlines, nor are updates scheduled with advance notice.
“Do not travel to The Colombian-Peruvian border area in the Loreto Region due to crime. (Nor) to El Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro (VRAEM), including areas within the Departments of Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica and Junín, due to crime and terrorism,” the warning specifies.
OMICRON AND THIRD DOSE
Peru’s Minister of Health, Hernando Cevallos, confirmed this Monday 20th that 12 cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 have been detected in Lima and announced that the authorities decided to advance the application of the third booster dose starting at three months of age throughout the country.
Cevallos said that those infected “are stable”, in quarantine at home, and “some of them are, others are not, they had” the vaccines against Covid-19.
Given the detection of more infected people with the Omicron variant, Cevallos informed this Monday that new sanitary measures and restrictions would be taken and said that it is necessary to increase the percentage of vaccinated people with two doses which currently reaches 74% of the target population.
“We need to surpass this figure against Omicron, it is insufficient,” he said before indicating that this variant “produces an immunological leakage” by evading “the effectiveness of vaccines” and is much more contagious since it can also infect people who have been vaccinated.
Despite this, the minister remarked that “it must be obvious that the vaccines continue to be effective” and that in the case of Omicron, “they make it possible to avoid up to 90% of the lethality” of the coronavirus.
For that reason, it has been decided to advance the application in the country of the third booster dose of the vaccine against covid-19 for all persons, from 18 years of age, who have completed three months since they received the second one since this increases protection by 75%.
“In the majority, we had extended to 80%, this is going to be reduced to 60%, at least”, he detailed before pointing out that the beginning of the curfew ordered for December 24 and 31 next December is going to be brought forward from 01.00 hours to 23.00 hours, since the risk of spread during the holidays is exceptionally high.