All sanitary requirements for entry into the country have been lifted
The Paraguayan government lifted all sanitary requirements for entry into the country effective Monday (October 24th). This means that the obligation to present a vaccination card that certifies immunization against COVID-19 as well as a negative PCR test for unvaccinated foreigners who do not live in the South American landlocked country, is no longer required for all entry routes. However, Health Surveillance Director-General Guillermo Sequera pointed out that the vaccination status of people entering the country will continue to be recorded, albeit only as a measure to monitor and observe the impact of the disease and not as a mandatory requirement.
Sequera also pointed out that the Health Ministry's decision is in line with the decline in the number of cases that has been ongoing for several weeks, with two consecutive weeks of no deaths. Only thirty-five new infections were detected between October 9th and October 15th, bringing the total number of confirmed infections since the start of the pandemic to 717,628. The Ministry of Health also announced that from January 2023 the vaccination against COVID-19 will only be given once a year in the form of a booster vaccination.
The Director of the Extended Vaccination Program, Héctor Castro, also reiterated that “we are no longer thinking about administering a fifth dose, so by the first days of January 2023, barring any major epidemiological change, we already have the updated composition of these vaccines that will be tailored to new strains of SARS-CoV-2 as they are discovered. These booster shots will likely be given as part of the winter vaccination campaign and along with the flu shots. "It's an annual booster shot, especially for people who are highly contagious, the chronically ill, vulnerable children and the elderly," Castro said.
Paraguayan health authorities have administered around 9,459,579 doses of COVID-19 vaccine of various brands, including 3,995,592 first doses (59.2 percent), 3,529,592 second doses (52.3 percent), 1,618,289 third or first booster doses (23.9 percent) and 316,078 fourth or second booster doses (4.6 percent). The neighboring country of Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia has around 7.3 million inhabitants.
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