Quiroga says vaccination of Copa America players will not be mandatory يكون

The Minister of Health, Marcelo Quiroga, held a press conference on Monday (7) to explain the security protocols of the Copa America in Brazil. Quiroga stressed that “no effort will be made” to vaccinate the athletes before the competition, noting that vaccination of participants would not be mandatory.

“If you require the athletes to be vaccinated at that time, they will not have immunity until the start of the competition; such competitions هذه [demais competições esportivas no Brasil] They existed without the need for vaccination, so the topic of vaccination is not a presumption. Those who are vaccinated are better, the minister said, but no greater effort will be made to vaccinate these athletes now, because the vaccine can cause a reaction and can harm the rhythm of the players.”

Marcelo Quiroga introduced the security measures that will be applied during the event, such as testing athletes every 48 hours, isolating the technical committee on different floors of hotels, and sterilizing buses, as well as ensuring this, if there is a need for this. Hospital admission for any athlete, beds from the Unified Health System (SUS) will not be used.

“Here it will not be a rapid test, it will be RT-PCR. It is a very safe control, none of these tests will be done by SUS, all athletes have health insurance, if there is a need for a hospital fitting, the athletes are properly insured and will use the hospital network,” Quiroga said. own”.

The event starts on June 13 and runs until July 13, with 10 delegations and 28 matches participating. A study prepared by the Ministry of Health defines the event as safe, given the history of contamination already given by the athletes.

For the ministry, the conditions offered make the event “low-risk for Covid-19”.

“We are concerned about what has been happening in recent months, what the CBF has sent us is that there were more than 89,000 PCR tests done last year; more than 13,000 athletes were tested, of whom only 2.2% tested positive, and only one athlete was hospitalized. This It is the interest of the Ministry of Health, to have a low-risk event, which reduces the risk in light of a well-designed health protocol, that is what we have been doing in the department,” explained Alessandra Sequeira, Director of the Department of Science and Technology.

Minister Marcelo Quiroga confirmed that other sporting events take place in Brazil, and that there is no legal impediment to competition being held in the country.

“It is not a large-scale tournament, and assuming that competitive sporting activities occur naturally in our country, there is no legal or health obstacle to this event in the country,” Quiroga said.

Photo: Reproduction / CNN