Mexico’s Association of Tourism Ministers will demand the federal government to impose travel restrictions on incoming international visitors. The policy would include a negative Covid-19 test or vaccine certificate, said Oaxaca Tourism Minister Juan Carlos Rivera Castellanos last week.
One of the key points of the proposal is whether vaccinated travelers should be allowed into the country regardless of the type of COVID-19 vaccine they have received.
Concerns about some batches of the Indian-produced vaccine and others, are considerations the Minister of Health would need to take into account.
For instance, the European Union has only approved vaccines produced by Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, and even those have been called into question.
Mexico boasts to be one of the 5 countries in the world allowing visitors to enter with no restrictions whatsoever. This year, limited capacity on businesses and mass gatherings in some areas of Mexico have been lifted.
This laissez-faire approach has led the country to have multiple waves of coronavirus, hurting its health care system and losing thousands of Mexican lives.
Following the results that the lack of real official guidelines have brought to the hospitality industry, hotels, restaurants, bars and other tourism-related attractions have had to implement their own safety protocols, revealed Rivera in an interview.
It’s difficult to know if the members of the Federal Government will respond positively to the proposal.
Only a few weeks ago, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stated his country had no intentions of asking inbound travelers any proof of vaccination or a negative test.
Instead, he ensured that vaccine mandates were not “part of the government’s long-term health and safety plans.”
“Although cases continue, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths has reduced considerably,” he said. “The National Vaccination Program (…) has functioned with efficiency and has reached every town in Mexico,” said Lopez last week.
Rivera will be taking the plan to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week regardless.