Uruguay studies opening of borders to people vaccinated from spring

The President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, affirmed that so well el Gobierno “por ahora no” está pensando en un cambio de estrategia sanitaria, como consecuencia del ingreso de nuevas variants del coronavirus, sí estudia la apertura de fronteras para “algunas personas que estén immunizadas” from September.

“One of the most affected sectors being tourism, we plan to open the borders in the spring for some immune people,” Lacalle Pou said at a press conference.

Asked about a possible change in strategy due to the entry of new variants of the virus, the leader of the multicolored coalition clarified: “Not for the moment. There is a suggestion from the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) regarding the travelers on their return to the country, regarding the quarantine, we talked about it, we will decide it these days. “

The MSP, for its part, considers that compulsory quarantine should again be required for all those entering the country since, for a few weeks, those who enter with a negative PCR test and vaccinated, isolation is recommended and requires only to do a PCR test on the seventh day or quarantine for 14 days in case of refusal to undergo the second test.

The request follows yesterday’s announcement by the Interagency Working Group on Genomic Surveillance, which reported the entry, for the first time, of the Delta and Beta variants by travelers from four different countries.

Regarding the vaccination plan, Lacalle Pou said: “I continue to argue that it should not be mandatory. There is a policy by the government to go to people who have not been vaccinated, but most Uruguayans will be vaccinated. “

Since the start of the vaccination campaign 4,505,681 doses of the Covid-19 drug were applied: 2,462,027 people had at least one dose and 2,043,654 the full regimen.

Uruguay has a total of 378,733 infections and 5,879 deaths at the end of the day since the start of the pandemic. The country has reached 1,688 deaths per million inhabitants and has overtaken countries like France (1,652), Portugal (1,685) and even the European Union average (1,667).