Fauci: UK travel restrictions staying put
‘More likely months than weeks’ until they’re lifted
Dr. Anthony Fauci warned a British newspaper that vacationers across the pond shouldn’t expect travel restrictions to the U.S. to lift anytime soon.
U.K. travelers will remain barred from coming into the U.S. for “more likely months than weeks,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told British newspaper The Telegraph in a recent interview, and the restrictions could even stay in effect until a vaccine is developed. The U.S. is home to more than 2 million coronavirus cases as of Monday morning, and the U.K. has nearly 300,000. More than 115,000 people have died in the U.S. compared with more than 41,000 in the U.K.
“It’s going to be really wait and see,” Fauci said. “I don’t think there’s going to be an immediate pull back for those kinds of restrictions. My feeling, looking at what’s going on with the infection rate, I think it’s more likely measured in months rather than weeks.”
Beginning June 8, the U.K. began allowing international travelers back, but there are different self-isolation rules and penalties by destination.
The U.S. State Department has advised people not to travel internationally at all since late March, and President Donald Trump banned travel from the U.K. and Ireland earlier that month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still has its highest travel warning in effect for the United Kingdom and much of Europe as well as China, Brazil and Iran.
The warnings remain intact as states reopen throughout the U.S. and mass protests continue after the death of George Floyd after a police officer pinned him by his neck. Thousands have gone to Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the country amid calls for social distancing.
“We were successful in suppressing the virus in cities where there were major outbreaks – New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans,” Fauci told The Telegraph. “But we’re seeing several states, as they try to reopen and get back to normal, starting to see early indications (that) infections are higher than previously.”
As for protesting, he said: “I would say in a perfect world people shouldn’t congregate in a crowd and demonstrate. But I know, even though you say that, they are going to go do it. So, if you’re going to do it, don’t take the mask off when you’re chanting, and screaming, and yelling, and doing whatever at a demonstration.”