The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) decided this Wednesday to end the mandatory use of masks in commercial aviation, due to a lower incidence of Covid-19 cases in the country.
Masks on planes and airports were mandatory between March 2020 and August 2022, when the pandemic seemed to be waning in Brazil, but they were imposed again last November after a spike in the number of infections.
Today, in a decision that underlined the importance of masks to prevent further spread of the coronavirus, Anvisa decided to suspend the requirement again.
“Under the measure, the use will become a recommendation and will cease to be an obligation,” the statement read.
Brazil has been one of the countries hardest hit in the world by the pandemic, which so far, three years after the first case, has caused the death of around 699,000 Brazilians and 37 million infections.
Anvisa’s decision on masks at airports and on planes coincided with the start of a vast new vaccination campaign promoted by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on January 1.
Among the objectives of the new Government are people who have not yet completed the vaccination schedule.
Less than 50% of the 210 million Brazilians received the three doses that, according to the Ministry of Health, is what guarantees the “minimum necessary” levels of protection.
In the new campaign, bivalent vaccines will be administered, which offer greater protection against the most recent variants of the virus, and, in a first phase, to people over 70 years of age, residents of nursing homes, indigenous people and people who suffer from some form of of immunosuppression.
Source: TSF
