Brazil to close air border to travelers from six African countries

Brasilia, Nov 27 (Prensa Latina) The Brazilian government will close its air borders to travelers coming from six southern African countries as of Monday, according to an order published by the Official Journal of the Union on Saturday.

November 27, 2021
CST12:46 (GMT) -0500

Published by: Aleynes Palacios Hurtado

At first, this information was disclosed on Friday by Minister Head of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira.

This decision was made by the discovery of Omicron, the new B.1.1.529 Covid-19 variant, detected in South Africa for the first time.

This restriction will be applied to travelers coming from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

According to Nogueira, this decision was jointly made by the Civil House and the ministries of Infrastructure, Health, Justice and Public Security.

He said that “Brazil will close air borders to six African countries due to the new coronavirus variant. We are going to protect Brazilians in this new phase of the pandemic in that country. The ordinance will be published tomorrow (on Saturday) and should take effect from Monday.”

According to certain medical literature, the B.1.1.529 variant is alarming because it has 50 mutations, something unprecedented, more than 30 in the Spike S protein, “the key” used by the virus to enter the cells and the goal of most Covid-19 vaccines.

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