The decision from Luís Roberto Barroso challenges a more
lenient rule announced by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has
opposed mandatory immunization against the virus that can cause COVID-19.
Barroso’s ruling must be reviewed by all 11 judges of the
Supreme Court next week.
The federal government announced Tuesday that travelers
arriving in Brazil did not have to produce a vaccine passport though they would
have to undergo a five-day quarantine.
In ruling on a petition filed by the Network Sustainability
party, Barroso said monitoring the quarantines of thousands of travelers would
be too difficult and would put Brazilians at risk.
“The threat of promoting anti-vaccine tourism, due to the
imprecision of the regulations that require the voucher, represents an imminent
risk,” Barroso said in the ruling.
Brazil’s president has argued that those backing the use of
vaccine passports want to restrict freedoms of the population.
“Where is our freedom? I’d rather die than lose my freedom,”
Bolsonaro said Tuesday.
More than 616,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Brazil,
the country with second-most deaths from the disease.
The pandemic has waned in recent months and the nation’s
seven-day average is approaching 200 deaths a day. But many of Brazil’s major
cities, including Rio de Janeiro, have either cancelled or scaled back their
New Year’s Eve festivities due to fears of a new spread of the virus.