France suspends flights with Brazil to avoid Brazilian variant of the coronavirus

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL –  France will suspend “until further notice” all its flights with Brazil due to concerns generated by the Brazilian variant of Covid-19, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Tuesday.

“We have noticed that the situation is worsening and have therefore decided to suspend all flights between Brazil and France until further notice,” he said.

The measure is valid both for flights departing from Brazil and those leaving French territory and meets the requests of experts in the European country, who warned about the danger of the virus entering the country.

The health crisis in Brazil has been getting worse since February, especially due to the appearance of the Manaus variant of the virus, known as P1, considered to be more contagious and dangerous.

The country has broken daily death records and has accumulated 354,617 deaths and 13.5 million confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic. On Tuesday, a new record of deaths may be registered since there was a lack of information from the states on Monday.

The new Brazilian variant has already become a factor of concern in other parts of the world, such as Canada, which records the highest number of P1 cases outside Brazil. In France, even though the Brazilian variant is a minority, health professionals have been warning for some days about the spread of the strain. The opposition has even demanded that the government stop flights to Brazil.

According to information from the newspaper Le Monde, on Monday, April 12, the Minister of Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, said that the government had decided to maintain some lines with Brazil out of respect for the freedom of the French people to come and go. Travelers arriving in the country from Brazil had to present a negative PCR test and isolate themselves for ten days.

The uncontrolled pandemic situation experienced in Brazil causes concern in the world not only because of the existence of the Manaus variant. But the large replication of the virus makes the fertile ground for the appearance of new variants that are increasingly contagious and possibly resistant to vaccine – which P1 is not yet.