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Updated May 27th, 2020 at 15:18 IST

Diplomat: US gave Brazil heads up about travel ban

A Brazilian diplomat said his government was  communicating with the White House on a routine basis weeks before the United States issued a coronavirus travel ban on Latin America's hardest-hit country.

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A Brazilian diplomat said his government was  communicating with the White House on a routine basis weeks before the United States issued a coronavirus travel ban on Latin America's hardest-hit country.

Brazil has more than 360,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, including more than 22,000 deaths according to health ministry data released Sunday night, meaning it trails only the U.S. in the Johns Hopkins University tally.

Acting Ambassador Nestor Forster, Brazil's Chargé d'Affaires in Washington DC, said the travel ban includes a lot of exceptions and will not setback their relationship with the U.S. government.

"The travel restriction, it's temporary. It's directed at the public health situation," Forster said. "We want to look beyond that and look at the things we can do together. As I mentioned, you know, in terms of research and exchanging information about vaccines, therapy, medicines that we know we're able to develop to treat this awful disease."

The White House said Sunday it plans to donate 1,000 ventilators to Brazil.

Forster, who was nominated by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, claims the country has been very serious about combating the coronavirus crisis on all fronts, including the social and economic implications.

"From the outset, (Bolsonaro) said we need to be concerned about the facts that the measures will have on the most vulnerable in our population," Forster said. "Those include 40 million Brazilians who work in the informal sector who have no other resource than to wake up in the morning and go win their bread. If you stay at home, you know do nothing, these people will starve. These people will not be able to feed their families."

The United States and Brazil have one of the longest-running bilateral relationships that dates back to the 1800s. Forster admits it's had it's up's and down but said the bond between the two countries has never been better with Bolsonaro and Trump as the two heads of state.

While he did not want to speculate about the upcoming 2020 presidential election in the U.S., Forster said the Brazilian embassy has cultivated friendships with Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

"Respect for the rule of law, democracy itself, respect for human rights, for individual freedoms. That's, you know, the bedrock upon which the US-Brazil relations take place today and will take place for a very long time, independent of what happens in elections in both countries," Forster said.

Data from Brazil's civil aviation agency shows there has already been a sharp reduction in U.S.-bound flights from the South American country. There were more than 700 flights from Brazil to the U.S. in February of this year, with the number dropping to just 140 in April, two months later.

There were more than 700 flights to the U.S. from Brazil in April 2019, the data shows.

 

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Published May 27th, 2020 at 15:18 IST

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