Do You Need the Yellow Fever Vaccine for Brazil?

Three questions get folded into one search: what Brazil demands at the door, what the next country demands of someone arriving from Brazil, and what health authorities recommend.

The document at the centre is the Certificado Internacional de Vacinação ou Profilaxia — International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis, CIVP in Portuguese, ICVP in English. Brazil's issuer is Anvisa, the health-surveillance agency. The customs form is another agency's business — Receita Federal's.

Brazil does not ask for it at the border

Anvisa Technical Note 33/2026, the standing instruction to ports, airports and borders, puts it in one sentence: O Brasil não exige o CIVP para Febre Amarela — Brazil does not require the certificate. The same paragraph says why it exists anyway: some countries require it to enter their territory, so Brazil issues it for vaccination carried out in the country. Signed August 18–19, 2026, and listed among Anvisa's current notes. Checked on September 24, 2026.

Two records say the same thing, and the second is derived from the first. WHO's country list, which states themselves confirm, gives Brazil one line under yellow fever: "Country requirement at entry: no". And Anvisa's list of countries that do require it, running from South Africa to Zimbabwe, does not contain Brazil. The note also rules out the temporary measures an outbreak can switch on, finding none indicated for the country's points of entry.

The certificate is for the country you go to next

Brazil sits on WHO's risk list, footnoted as risk present only in parts of the country. That classification triggers everyone else's rules, which are mostly written as arriving from a country with risk of transmission rather than as lists of named countries.

So the live question is the leg after Brazil. In WHO's wording, South Africa, Thailand and China require proof from travellers arriving from risk countries and count more than 12 hours of airport transit through one. India is blunter: anyone arriving without proof after being in a risk area is "detained in isolation for up to 6 days", and WHO's summary table marks India as counting airport transit whatever its duration. Paraguay skips the abstraction and requires proof from travellers "arriving from Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela", plus anyone who transited for more than 24 hours in those countries.

That rule bites at Foz do Iguaçu, where crossing to Ciudad del Este is a bus ride; Argentina, on the other side of the same corner, records no requirement. A connection counts as a visit — the trap that also makes a layover a visa question and a São Paulo connection a baggage question. Anvisa's 2026 note puts the count of countries requiring the document above 120.

Where the vaccine is recommended, and who says so

A requirement and a recommendation are different objects. What follows is not our advice; it is what two named authorities publish.

WHO's country list, in the Brazil entry dated 2022, records the vaccination recommendation as yes and says where: all travellers aged 9 months or over going to Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Distrito Federal, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Pará, Paraná, Piauí, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, Rondônia, Roraima, Santa Catarina, São Paulo and Tocantins, plus designated areas of Bahia. It adds that vaccination "is also recommended for travellers visiting Iguazu Falls", and is not recommended "for travellers whose itineraries are limited to areas not listed above, including the cities of Fortaleza and Recife".

Brazil's health ministry uses a wider ruler: it recommends the vaccine for the whole population, says the dose is available at any public basic health unit, and asks for it at least 10 days before travel, on the single-dose-for-life schedule adopted in April 2017.

What Brazil's own surveillance says

Anvisa's note carries the picture behind all of this. For July 2025 to June 2026 it records 71 confirmed epizootics in non-human primates, 15 human cases and 8 deaths — a lethality of 53.3% — and states that every human case was in an unvaccinated person. São Paulo state alone registered 11 cases and six deaths between January and June 16, 2026, none with a vaccination record. WHO reassessed the risk on June 17, 2026 as low globally and high in regions with a history of transmission.

Brazil's last urban yellow fever cases were recorded in 1942; every confirmed case since has come from the forest cycle.

Who can get the Brazilian certificate, and who cannot

Here foreign travellers hit the wall: Anvisa issues the certificate only to people vaccinated in Brazil. A dose given in London or Atlanta does not convert into a Brazilian document.

The service is online and free. The gov.br service record, modified April 24, 2026, lists who may use it: people vaccinated in Brazil travelling to countries that require the certificate, children from nine months, and — the line that matters here — foreigners and people without a CPF, provided someone who does have a CPF and a gov.br account files the request for them. The prerequisite is not a passport but a CPF in the room: one more entry on the list of things that quietly need one, one more reason getting a CPF is an early errand.

The request wants a scan of the vaccination record carrying the name, date of birth, dose, date, a legible batch number, the vaccinator's signature and the clinic's stamp; the service page puts that step at one to five business days. Anvisa's note adds a detail that catches people vaccinated in Brazilian campaigns: only the full standard dose qualifies, not the fractional one. Where a person cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, Anvisa says the certificate is unavailable and points to a doctor's exemption letter in English or French.

Ten days, then for life — and a decree that still says ten years

The rule everyone half-remembers is the ten-year one, dead internationally for a decade. The World Health Assembly amended Annex 7 of the International Health Regulations through resolution WHA67.13, in force July 11, 2016. From that date, WHO says, certificates old and new alike are valid for the life of the person vaccinated; an arriving traveller's certificate "cannot be rejected on the grounds that more than 10 years have passed", and "Boosters or revaccination cannot be required."

Now the wrinkle. The Regulations are domestic law in Brazil through Decree 10,212 of January 30, 2020, which promulgates the 2005 text as approved by Congress. Its Annex 7 still says the protection lasts ten years and the certificate is valid for ten years — pre-2016 wording, published four years after the amendment took effect. Checked on Planalto on September 24, 2026: no amended wording, no revocation note, no consolidated version. Brazil's health authorities apply the lifetime rule anyway.

That same Annex 7 holds the power travellers fear: a state whose territory has the mosquito vector may quarantine someone arriving from a risk area without a valid certificate, until it becomes valid or for up to six days from last possible exposure, whichever is shorter. Brazil has the vector and does not use the power.

Sources

All read September 24, 2026.

• Anvisa — Technical Note 33/2026, signed August 18–19, 2026, among Anvisa's current notes
• Anvisa — the certificate page, its questions and answers (modified July 12, 2023) and the country list, file dated December 2022
• gov.br — the service record, modified April 24, 2026
• Ministry of Health — Febre amarela and Viajantes e a Febre Amarela
• WHO — International Travel and Health, Annex 1 and the Country List, both November 18, 2022, revised January 3, 2023
• WHO — the Annex 7 amendment, resolution WHA67.13; Brazil's Decree 10,212/2020, Annex 7

Method on how we research; Jeff Bruno writes from Curitiba. Next door: documents, visas by nationality, apostilles, all guides.

What we could not verify

• Whether either list has been reviewed since 2022. WHO's Annex 1 is dated November 18, 2022, revised January 3, 2023, with no later edition at that address on September 24, 2026; Anvisa's list is stamped Atualizado em dezembro/2022 and draws on the same WHO file. Both warn that requirements change at any time.
• Which footnote applies to Paraguay in WHO's table. Its row carries markers 7 and 10, and the footnote block runs 1 to 9 then jumps to 11, with no note 10. Note 11 describes travellers who transited for more than 24 hours in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela, matching Paraguay's country entry word for word — but WHO does not connect them, and we will not print a correction WHO has not made.
• When the health ministry's traveller page was last reviewed. It carries no publication or modification stamp, unlike Anvisa's pages, and it says the certificate is issued by public and private services registered with Anvisa — where Anvisa says the service is online only. We report both, dated.