“It’s a dream”: a wave of Latin Americans flies to the United States to be vaccinated

RIO DE JANEIRO.- Florencia González Alzaga, a photographer from Buenos Aires, devised her plan to travel to the United States to be vaccinated against the coronavirus after the topic was brought up at his Zoom Book Club.

Juan Pablo Bojacá, an Instagram influencer from Colombia which specializes in austere travel, urged its 137,000 subscribers to give it a try, posting a step-by-step video guide showing how to go through passport control in Miami.

José Acevedo, a real estate agent of Paraguay, he was amazed at how easy everything was in Las Vegas.

Frustrated by the slow pace of vaccination campaigns in their countries and seeing excess doses in the United States “Where tens of millions of Americans have chosen not to be vaccinated,” Middle-class and affluent Latin Americans with American tourist visas have flocked to the United States in recent weeks to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

“It’s a dream to have him,” said González, who was vaccinated in Miami in April.

Access has proven to be a boon for the privileged in countries where the virus continues to have a brutal impact, although many, including beneficiaries, question that vaccine tourism exacerbates the inequalities that have worsened the impact of the pandemic.

Sean Simons, a spokesperson for the ONE campaign, which works to eradicate disease and poverty, said vaccine trips could have serious unintended consequences, and urged countries with vaccine surpluses to do so. route through a World Health Organization vaccine distribution system known as Covax.

“Millionaires and billionaires who cross continents and oceans to get vaccinated, usually twice, means higher exposure, higher likelihood of the variants spreading, and access only for the elite,” he said. he declares.

The government of Joe biden announced earlier this month that it would deliver 80 million doses of vaccine by the end of June to countries struggling to immunize their populations.

However, as the success stories of Latin Americans who have been vaccinated are shared on social media and word of mouth, and local officials in New York and Alaska are actively promoting vaccination tourism., the cost of plane tickets on various routes has skyrocketed as thousands consider heading north.

Travel agencies in the region have started selling vaccination kits, including multi-country itineraries for Brazilians, who must spend two weeks in a third country before being allowed to enter the United States.

José Carlos Brunetti, vice president of Maral Turismo, a travel agency in the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, said the trips had been a blessing to his industry after a dismal year.

“In March, the fury started that people were going to the United States and trying to get vaccinated,” he said. “Today that fury is translating into exponential growth in the number of passengers and flights.” Generally speaking, foreigners entering on a tourist visa can seek medical treatment in the United States.

Although the State Department conducts security background checks on foreign nationals applying for visas, officials said they do not explicitly screen people who visit for vaccinations, and it does not appear There should be federal government guidelines for foreign nationals arriving in the United States for this purpose.

Once in the country, officials said, it is up to states, local communities and health care providers to decide whether to administer the vaccine without having proof of residency in the United States.

Among those who flew to the United States to be vaccinated, there are prominent politicians. César Acuña promised as Peru’s presidential candidate earlier this year that he would be “the last” in his country to be vaccinated. But after losing at the polls, he said there was no point in keeping that promise..

“Remember that I am 68 years old, I am a vulnerable person,” he said in a radio interview.

Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s former president, pledged in February that he would not get the vaccine “until the last of the Argentineans at risk and essential workers get it.”. Despite having imposed a series of strict quarantine measures since last year, Argentina is facing a generalized epidemic which experts say is in part fueled by a highly contagious variant first detected in Brazil. .

Despite his promise to wait to get vaccinated, Macri wrote in a Facebook post this month that he had been vaccinated in Miami with the Johnson & Johnson single dose after realizing that “vaccines are given anywhere , from beaches to shopping centers, and even in pharmacies ”.

Among the 12 Latin Americans who traveled to the United States to be vaccinated and who were interviewed for this article, several expressed a sense of conflict. Some, who did not want their statements recorded, said they felt guilty about being vaccinated while their compatriots, more vulnerable to the disease, remained at risk.

González, the Argentinian photographer, said her plan was devised after members of her online book club started talking more about their fears about the pandemic than about the books they were reading. “We started talking about it and we thought, why don’t we go to Miami to get the shot?” He said. “Week to week we buy the tickets.”

González said he was easily able to make an appointment for the vaccine the day after he arrived in Miami on April 1. The Johnson & Johnson injection she received at a Salvation Army facility marked the end of a painful period of isolation that reminded her of her cancer treatment seven years ago.

He was surprised how few questions people at the vaccination center asked him. “They wanted to vaccinate,” he said. “They were delighted to donate the vaccine”.

The first wave of Argentinian travelers vaccinated and returned home with U.S. vaccination certificates caused a sharp rise in the price of airline tickets, said Santiago Torre Walsh, who runs a popular travel blog called Sir Chandler.

Travelers were initially reluctant to recognize the purpose of their trip, he noted. “It has changed,” he says. “Now people are whitewashing the intention to do it more and it infects other people to do it too.”

This is what Bojacá, the Colombian Instagram influencer, did. Video of his vaccination trip, posted to Instagram, includes a surreptitiously recorded scene in which a US passport control officer asks who he is going to visit. He and a fellow traveler said they were going to visit friends.

“The man He didn’t even ask us why we were coming, ”Bojacá marvels in a later scene in the video. “I had practiced 80 times how to say ‘vaccine’ in English.”

As the flow of travelers seeking vaccines from countries like Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Mexico has increased for months, Brazilians face a unique challenge..

Currently, the United States prohibits most people who have spent time in Brazil from boarding American cities, unless they have passed two weeks in a country not subject to coronavirus travel restrictions. Returning US citizens and permanent residents are permitted to enter the United States from Brazil.

Andrea Schver, owner of Venice Turismo, a travel agency based in São Paulo, said the ban was not insurmountable for wealthy clients, who are increasingly willing to spend several thousand dollars to get a vaccine. . In April, it sold packages that included a two-week stopover in places like Cancun or a Caribbean island. It was only in the first 18 days of May that he organized trips for more than 40 passengers, he said.

His clients include a TV star who will start filming a new show shortly and other wealthy Brazilians used to take extravagant vacations every year, he said.

“These are families who travel throughout the year and who stayed in the field last year with money to spare,” he said, noting that almost all of the customers had bought cars. business class tickets. “These are not people looking for bargains.

Acevedo, the Paraguayan real estate agent, said he came to see his trip to get the vaccine as a worthwhile investment and perhaps a step in saving his life, as being overweight put him at greater risk.

“I cannot stop producing, working and my job involves contact with many people,” he said.

He reasoned that by getting an American vaccine, he lightened the burden on the Paraguayan government. “Part of that is not getting the people who need it most,” he said.

The New York Times

Conocé The Trust Project