The authorities of the Ministry of Public Health of Uruguay announced that starting in April the requirement to submit an antigen test to enter Uruguay will be lifted.
At this time, Uruguay requires for entry that a complete vaccination schedule, a PCR or negative antigen test, travel health insurance and an affidavit of admission be presented. Other countries, such as Argentina, require the same (in addition to an exit affidavit), but it is not necessary to present swabs.
These types of measures, together with the exchange rate difference, favor the fact that Uruguayan tourism ceases to be within their own country and that they turn to Argentina. At the moment, at the official exchange rate, one Uruguayan peso is equivalent to 2.58 Argentines.
The Minister of Tourism, Tabaré Viera, had already insisted on the importance of this measure to contribute to the growth of the tourism sector, which, despite the summer season, failed to recover. At a press conference he said that “the more flexible income is made and the lives of tourists are made easier, the better for the sector. But it has a health fund that has to be resolved by the MSP.”
Satdijan commented on the measures taken so far by the Ministry of Public Health: “In these two years we were very responsible. Currently, the remaining measures are for enclosed spaces in some activities. All [outdoor] activities no longer have protocols, [although] there are recommendations for masks in case of large crowds,” he said on Radio Universal.
For his part, the minister of the portfolio, Daniel Salinas, declared that the cessation of the health emergency “is an agenda item for when the omicron wave passes and important vaccination groups are reached in March,” La Diaria reported.
In this context, Salinas said that he believes that “the conditions for progressive normality will be in place.” Like Satdjian, he said that, just as in February all outdoor activities were enabled without the need for capacity control or vaccination status of attendees, in the first week of April there could be increased flexibility in indoor activities, education and entry conditions.
“Surely all that will be considered within the package of measures,” he said. Asked about the cessation of the use of masks, he added that “we are not going to rush” and asked that it continue to be used in closed spaces as it was the measure that also allowed to reduce infections of other respiratory viruses in the last two years.
Vaccination figures
In Uruguay, 79% of the population is immunized with two doses of vaccines against covid-19. 58% of the total were also given three doses. On the anniversary of the two years since the first case of covid-positive was detected in Uruguay, last Thursday, Salinas reported that “the fourth dose is coming very well.” In addition, 48% of children between the ages of five and eleven received a dose.
According to Salinas, these levels of vaccination are what allowed “to clearly cushion the impact in terms of hospitalization, hospitalization in STI and deaths” during the wave of infections generated in January and February 2022 due to the omicron variant.
The hierarch recalled that there were a high number of cases back then, but that “they were much milder than in the first wave” caused by the P1 variant between March and July 2021.
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