Brazil is now open to tourism – but how safe is it? With zero testing and quarantine on arrival, luxury hotels are stepping up social distancing – but would you fly to Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo for a holiday right now?
Home of the Amazon, Pantanal, Iguazu Falls and Corcovado, beautiful Brazil has opened its doors again despite clocking 4.5 million coronavirus infections and counting, but will sanitising gels in your room be enough to convince tourists it is safe to visit? And can you really samba and socially distance?
Brazil has officially reopened its borders to tourists arriving by air, with President Jair Bolsonaro’s government ending the strictest travel restrictions on July 29, in an attempt to dig the nation out of even deeper economic hardship.
The largest country in South America has been hit especially hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, clocking the third-highest number of infections and second-highest number of fatalities on the globe, standing at more than 4.5 million infections and over 138,000 deaths at the time of writing. But while the country’s neighbours such as Argentina, Chile and Colombia remain closed off to tourists, the only requirement to enter Brazil is that travellers prove they have bought health insurance to cover their stay. There will be no mandatory testing on arrival, and no quarantine.
The measure is an apparent bid to bolster Brazil’s ailing tourism industry, which accounts for eight per cent of Brazil’s economy and employs around eight million people, with the industry estimated to have lost 122 billion real (US$22.3 billion) due the pandemic.
“We have 45,000 hotels in Brazil with only 45 per cent of their capacity being used,” says Gilson Machado Neto, president of Embratur, Brazil’s tourism institute, during a press conference. “Incentivising tourism is the fastest way to help Brazil’s economy recover.”
In preparation for the predicted influx of tourists – especially from neighbouring countries such as Costa Rica and Honduras that have also opened borders – many hotels have put in place stringent measures to provide a safe environment for guests and staff.