Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro repeated his criticism of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday.
Brasilia:
President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday criticized Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa for proposing vaccination requirements for travelers to the country to help prevent the spread of novel coronavirus variants.
“Anvisa wants to close the country’s airspace right now. Not again, damn it,” Bolsonaro said at a business event in Brasilia.
Anvisa last month proposed passing a ‘vaccination passport’ for entry to Brazil, but the government has yet to decide on the issue, something Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked.
Vaccine skepticism from Bolsonaro, who says he has not had a COVID-19 vaccine, has dampened Brazilians’ eagerness to get vaccinated, with more than 85% of adults now fully vaccinated. . However, his decision on federal policy could settle the debate over requiring travelers to be vaccinated.
The government has scheduled a meeting on Monday to debate the issue. It was rescinded after the Supreme Court gave the executive 48 hours to explain why the vaccination passport had not been passed.
Last week, at Anvisa’s suggestion, the government suspended flights from six countries in southern Africa, where a new, fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus has been identified, Omicron.
Bolsonaro repeated his criticism of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, saying that vaccinated people can still get, spread the coronavirus, and die from COVID-19. He also downplayed the new variant, saying there were “thousands of viruses” and the pandemic was over.
While much is still unknown about Omicron, unvaccinated people account for the majority of severe COVID-19 cases and deaths.
More than 600,000 Brazilians have died from COVID-19, the highest death toll outside of the United States, as critics have criticized Bolsonaro for downplaying the severity of the virus, resisting the shutdown and delay the purchase of vaccines.
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