Remove Brazil from the Red to the Amber list

Brazil has over a quarter of its population fully-vaccinated (over 72 million people) – more than the whole UK population. Multiple European countries have opened their borders for Brazilian’s citizens vaccinated or with a negative PCR test. Please take it into consideration to move Brazil to Amber.

In Brazil the daily COVID19 infection rate has decreased steadily. In 06/09 9,154 new cases were reported whereas in the UK 41,192 and in India (recently removed from Red list) 30,184. Delta is the predominant variant-Rio (86%) and Sao Paulo (~70%).

Brazil partially vaccinated population is 65%–same as Germany, more than US (62%) and India (38%) –, fully vaccinated is 31% (India 11%), some areas have started to vaccinate 12-17 years-old, and will start a 3rd dose for over 70s in the second half of September.

Travel restrictions were introduced for Brazil from 15 January 2021, meaning that visitors who have been in or transited Brazil in the last 10 days were denied entry to the UK. The decision to ban travel was taken to prevent the spread of a new strain of coronavirus into the UK which was first identified in Brazil and subsequently named the Beta variant.

These measures did not include British and Irish Nationals, or third country nationals with residence rights in the UK, who were able to enter the UK but were required to self-isolate for 10 days on arrival along with their household.

From 15 February 2021, international arrivals to England were required to quarantine in a government-managed hotel if, within the ten days before arrival, they had been in or transited a country to which a travel ban applied. This included arrivals from Brazil.

On 17 May 2021, the UK Government introduced the traffic light system to provide a risk-based framework for the safe and sustainable return to international travel. The traffic light system categorises countries and territories based on risk to protect public health and the vaccine rollout from variants of COVID-19. The Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) produces risk assessments of countries and territories. Decisions on red, amber or green list assignment and associated border measures are taken by Ministers, who take into account the JBC risk assessments, alongside wider public health factors.

Key factors in the JBC risk assessment of each country include: - Genomic surveillance capability - COVID-19 transmission risk - Variant of Concern transmission risk