Coronavirus & Uruguay

How Uruguay’s handling the pandemic & travel restrictions

Can I get into Uruguay right now?

Since November 1 2021, yes!

Do I need to quarantine?

No.

Do I need to be vaccinated?

No. Find out about Uruguay Covid travel requirements

How is the vaccination situation in Uruguay?

Uruguay has a long history of carrying out successful health campaigns and Uruguayans are used to getting vaccinated. All Uruguayan children must be vaccinated to attend school and having your vaccinations up to date is a requirement for anyone wanting to join a sports or leisure centre here.

So though vaccine roll out started later than in many parts of the world because as a small country it took some time to import supplies, Uruguay was amongst the top 10 of countries with most citizens vaccinated. By the end of July 2021, it became evident vaccines were controlling the pandemic in Uruguay. In part because Uruguayans were overwhelmingly eager to get vaccinated.

Has Uruguay had a ‘good’ pandemic?

Uruguay has never had a mandatory lockdown. Instead the new government–which had come into power on March 1 2020 just thirteen days before the first Covid 19 cases were announced in Uruguay–called on citizens to exercise ‘responsible freedom’ (‘libertad responsable’). This policy worked very well for the first nine months when Uruguay appeared as a case to be emulated. Numbers of cases began to increase significantly after a year. The reasons can be disputed—proximity and dry borders with Brazil and Argentina, pandemic ‘fatigue’, belief that once vaccination started the battle was won, are the main ones. Despite that, we have had privileged freedom of movement, city dwellers respectfully wear masks and the uptake for vaccines is strong. So I still feel as I did when I wrote in Medium.com in April 2020 that there is no place I would rather be in a pandemic than Uruguay.

Check out our archive to get an idea of what it’s been like living in Uruguay during this time.

I was asked how the Covid situation is in Uruguay right now. Here’s my reply (Mar 2022)
Six reasons I’m grateful to have been living in Uruguay during this pandemic (Nov 2021)
Uruguay covid cases back to 2020 levels (July 2021)
COVID-19 cases rise in Uruguay (Mar 2021)
Why Uruguay’s borders remained closed despite being on the EU’s travel list (Jan 2021)
Coronavirus in Uruguay II: The (long-expected) first wave came after 9 months of almost no cases (Dec 2020)
Coronavirus in Uruguay I: The first 9 months of pandemic Guru’Guay’s chronicle of the pandemic handling including restrictions, education, testing, industries returning to work (I kept this page updated regularly throughout Mar-Nov 2020. It’s an interesting document to understand the approach)
Property enquiries from US and Europe booming (July 2020)
Uruguay wine industry The 2020 grape harvest went on undeterred and the 2020 vintage was one of the best in decades (Apr 2020)

What it was like in Uruguay for foreigners?

In 2020 Guru’Guay covered the stories of eight foreigners who found themselves stuck in Uruguay when the borders closed in March for El Pais, Uruguay’s oldest national newspaper. Uruguayans LOVED reading the stories—they are generally a very self-critical lot and found the appreciation for their country unexpected.