Canada eyes mid-august to welcome back U.S. travellers

WASHINGTON — U.S. health officials issued more ominous warnings about COVID-19’S dangerous Delta cousin Friday just as Canada finally started floating the prospect of letting fully vaccinated American visitors back into the country as early as mid-august.

It made for a discordant pair of messages: Canada musing openly about easing travel restrictions on U.S. citizens at the same time as the Delta variant is threatening to undermine hard-won progress against the pandemic south of the border.

“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, told a briefing Friday.

The CDC is looking at a sevenday average of about 26,300 new cases per day, an increase of a whopping 70 per cent over the previous weeklong period, Walensky said. Daily COVID-19 deaths are also up by about 26 per cent, she added.

“We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage, because unvaccinated people are at risk. And communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well.”

In a call with provincial and territorial leaders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it clear Thursday that the next exemption would apply only to U.S. citizens and permanent residents who are fully vaccinated.

“The prime minister noted that, if our current positive path of vaccination rate and public health conditions continue, Canada would be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travellers from all countries by early September,” Trudeau’s office said in a readout of the call.

About 80 per cent of eligible Canadians have received at least one dose of a vaccine, and about 54 per cent are fully vaccinated.