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Jair bolsonaro
All Brazilians must be vaccinated against Covid-19 under the penalty of being excluded from certain activities and public spaces, the country’s highest court has decided.
Ten 11-member court judges backed the mandatory inoculation with a single vote against in a virtual session Thursday. The ruling is a blow to President Jair Bolsonaro, who has said that he will not receive a vaccine and that no one should be forced to do so.
The court stressed that its decision does not mean that Brazilians will be forcibly taken to receive the injections that the government will offer through the public health network. Vaccines against life-threatening diseases such as measles and meningitis have long been mandatory for children in Brazil, and judges dismissed a separate case that sought to relieve parents of that obligation due to religious beliefs.
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Bolsonaro has promised to make all of the Covid-19 vaccines approved by the health regulator available to the public, but at the same time has raised the prospects of an ineffective mass inoculation campaign by dissuading Brazilians from participating in it.
“No one can force anyone to get vaccinated,” he said at a ceremony in the state of Bahia, in the northeast of the country, after the court’s decision. “We are dealing with lives, where is our freedom?”
The number of Brazilians who are open to being vaccinated against Covid-19 has dropped to 73% in December from 89% in early August, according to a Datafolha survey. Those against shooting have risen to 22% from 9% in the same comparison. The pollster interviewed 2016 people by phone between December 8 and 10.
Although the Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello, has He said he hopes to have 25 million doses of three different vaccines ready by January, a date for a nationwide vaccination campaign has yet to be set.
– With the assistance of Luana Souza
