US to ease travel restrictions for fully vaccinated foreign visitors

The United States plans to ease travel restrictions for all fully vaccinated foreign visitors starting in November, the White House said Monday, relaxing a patchwork of bans that had begun to cause fury in Europe and replacing them with requirements more uniforms for arriving international air passengers.

The new rules will require all foreign nationals arriving in the United States to show proof of being fully vaccinated, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said.

He said the new rules will take effect in early November, a timeline that will give agencies and airlines “time to prepare.”

The lifting of general restrictions on travel from certain countries to the United States will be good news for thousands of foreigners with families in the United States who have been kept apart for most of the pandemic.

The Financial Times was the first to report the news.

In addition to requiring vaccination, the government said it is taking other steps to mitigate the spread of the virus in three other areas: testing, contact tracing and masking.

Fully vaccinated foreign citizens and U.S. citizens returning to the United States from abroad will be required to take a pre-departure Covid-19 test within three days of their flight and present proof of a negative result before boarding.

Unvaccinated Americans returning to the United States will be “subject to more stringent testing requirements,” Zients said, including a test within a day of departure and an additional test when they return.

Fully vaccinated passengers will not be subject to any quarantine orders upon arrival in the US.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to issue a contact tracing order requiring airlines to collect information from U.S.-bound travelers, including a phone number and email address, to alert travelers about possible exposure.

Airlines will be required to keep contact tracing information for 30 days.

“This will allow the CDC and state and local public health authorities to keep track of arriving travelers and the people around them in case anyone has potentially been exposed to Covid-19 and other pathogens,” Zients said, adding that this new requirement will be used more broadly moving forward to help protect “against any future threats to public health.”

The new guidance applies to all international travel. Zients said the White House would submit to the CDC the definition of “fully vaccinated,” including which vaccines qualify.

the vaccine AstraZeneca Covid-19 has not yet been approved for emergency use in the United States, but it is widely used in Europe and the rest of the world.

The development is a first step toward repairing one of several emerging rifts between the Biden administration and officials in Europe.

A dispute arose between the United States and France over an agreement to equip Australia with nuclear submarines, depriving France of a contract to supply conventional submarines. European leaders also found consultations with Biden's team on Afghanistan lacking.

The event will also be welcomed favorably by the travel industry, which had been lobbying the federal government to lift some of the rules that impede international tourism.

Airlines, hotels and hospitality groups expressed support for allowing vaccinated tourists from abroad to return to the United States.

Zients maintained that the administration is “not taking any measures off the table” when asked about the possibility of vaccine mandates for Americans traveling within the country.

And he said there have been no updates to existing rules regarding land border crossings with Canada and Mexico.

Great News for Many

The U.S. travel ban was imposed in the early days of the pandemic when then-President Donald Trump limited travel from China in January 2020.

That measure did not prevent the virus from reaching the United States, but other countries were added to the list as health officials pressured the White House to limit entry from places where case rates were high.

Trump added countries to the Schengen Zone – which covers 26 European states, including France, Germany and Italy – along with Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Brazil, South Africa and India were added separately. Land borders with Canada and Mexico have also been closed.

Biden has maintained strict bans on non-essential travel even as vaccination rates in Europe rise, citing the unpredictable nature of the pandemic and the emergence of the Delta variant.

But the system proved infuriating to European governments, whose countries' citizens still did not have access to the United States, even as those nations reduced their case counts amid successful vaccination campaigns.

Countries with higher cases that were not on the list were not subject to the rules.

Months of Discussion

Over the past few months, restrictions on travel for people wanting to enter the United States had turned into a major transatlantic rift.

European leaders, frustrated by the apparent lack of progress, began making their grievances public. They said the rules were damaging relations between Europe and the United States.

Europe opened its borders to Americans in June but last month reversed course, removing the United States from a safe list of countries whose citizens are exempt from quarantine or testing requirements.

Anger over a lack of reciprocity from the United States partly fueled the decision, European officials familiar with the matter said.

Biden took office promising to restore frayed alliances and spent much of a trip to Europe in June proclaiming his commitment to transatlantic ties.

He announced during the visit a series of task forces aimed at examining the reopening journey, but months passed with little to show for the effort.

Overseen by the White House Covid-19 response team and the National Security Council, the groups include representatives from the CDC along with officials from the Departments of State, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Transportation.

U.S. officials have partnered with representatives from the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada and Mexico and have met several times to discuss the reopening situation since the administration announced them at the start of Biden's first trip abroad in June.

There were also several smaller group conversations between these larger meetings to discuss specific issues such as the epidemiological situation, variants, surveillance and vaccination efforts, and plans to change travel restrictions, a White House official told CNN.

But some people familiar with the working groups questioned their effectiveness as other countries began opening up to Americans with little clarity about whether the U.S. would reciprocate.

A source familiar with the discussions described “interagency paralysis” over the next steps.

Source: CNN

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