U.S. to ease travel restrictions for foreign flights to America
The United States will require foreign nationals to be vaccinated and test negative for COVID-19 in order to enter the country. The new rules will take effect in November.
The United States will require all adult non-U.S. citizens to provide proof of vaccination and negative COVID-19 test results to enter the country, as part of a new set of rules for international air travel the White House announced on Monday.
White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Monday that the new rules, which will allow individuals from nations that are currently banned from entering the U.S., would go into effect starting in early November.
“In implementing additional strict safety protocols, we will protect Americans here at home, and enhance the safety of international travel,” Zients said.
Zients said the new rules would also authorize the collection of passenger data
for the purposes of contact tracing, including phone numbers and email addresses of inbound travelers. Airlines will need to keep that information for 30 days, Zients said.
The Biden administration had for months pushed off updating its international travel restrictions, citing a rise in coronavirus case counts over the summer, despite mounting opposition from travel industry groups, foreign government officials and legal residents of the U.S. who have not left the country for the last 18 months out of fear they would not be let back in.
Non-U.S. citizens who have been in the UK, Ireland, India and European nations in the Schengen area, including Italy, Spain, France, Denmark and Sweden, within the last 14 days are currently prohibited from traveling to the U.S., with some exceptions.
The travel restrictions that have been in place since last year have effectively kept most family members, tourists and business travelers from those nations from visiting the U.S., even as affected nations have opened their borders to Americans traveling abroad.
Pete Sibner, a Swedish national who lives in Lakewood Ranch, Fla., said two members of his extended family had died in the last several weeks, and neither he nor his wife, who is also from Sweden, were able to travel to their funerals.
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks,” he said, recounting how his wife had to say goodbye to her dying grandfather in a video call.
“She couldn’t be there when he passed away, and there was no way she could travel for the funeral, so she had to watch the funeral on FaceTime,” he added.
Sibner said a cousin he was close to also died recently, and the funeral is this week, but he will not be able to attend. “So that hurts.”
Individuals from other countries, including those with far lower vaccination rates than nations on the prohibition list, are currently able travel to the U.S., if they present proof of a negative coronavirus test prior to departure. Americans who travel abroad must also show negative COVID-19 test results to airlines in the 3-day period before their flight back to the U.S.
Americans seeking to re-enter the U.S. who are not vaccinated, including children, will be required to test negative within one day of their flight, under the new rules. They will be required to take a second test after their arrival.
A White House official said unvaccinated children who are not U.S. citizens could be a part of minimal exemptions to the new vaccination requirement.
Zients told reporters on Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be issuing an order requiring airlines to collect contract tracing information for all passengers. He said the agency will also be responsible for determining which vaccines meet the new air travel standards.
ECONOMIC RAMIFICATIONS
The human toll of the travel restrictions is one reason that a growing number of people inside and outside the U.S. have been pushing the Biden administration to introduce uniform standards. Travel and tourism groups have pushed hard for individuals from banned nations to travel to and from the country again to help boost the economy.
Travel industry advocates who have resisted vaccine mandates for international travelers now say that they would support them as a temporary measure, if it means the U.S. is reopening.
“It’s not something we want to see into perpetuity. It’s something that we would like to see for right now. The sooner that we can open the less that we’re going to lose,” Tori Emerson Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association, said in an interview prior to Monday’s announcement.
She said travel restrictions,
including those that the U.S. has on North American countries, are costing the nation $1.5 billion a week.
The land border restrictions on travel between Canada and Mexico are not a part of the new rules for international travel. They will remain in place for at least another month, the U.S. said Monday.
Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of the nonprofit marketing organization Visit California, said that preCOVID, international visitors spent $28 billion in the state. Beteta said that international travel is California’s number one export and is a bigger boon for the state than agriculture.
“California experienced a 55% decline overall in travel, and we’re not expecting to reach that point again until 2024. And it’s largely because of the international market, as well as group meetings,” said Beteta, a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, who wants the U.S.
reopen to international travel.
The new rules for international air travel will be similar to the systems other advanced nations now have in place.
Americans may travel to Italy if they show they are fully vaccinated, produce a negative COVID test taken 72 hours prior and submit a passenger locator form. France is currently open to fully vaccinated Americans, as well as minors accompanied by a vaccinated adult, who attest they have not been in contact with someone with COVID-19 and are not experiencing COVIDlike symptoms.
Elliott Ferguson, president and CEO of the nonprofit marketing corporation Destination DC, said in an interview prior to Monday’s announcement that it is time for the U.S. to think along the same lines.
“If the concern is, you could still have COVID and have been vaccinated, then let’s by all means, consider some other alternatives such as testing before a person is able to get on a flight and testing negatively before they are able to physically fly to the United States,” Ferguson said.
White House officials did not say Monday exactly when in November the new rules would take effect.
Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president of legislative and regulatory policy at Airlines for America, told McClatchy prior to the announcement that the airline advocacy group believes there are mitigation measures that can be put in place that allow for the safe reopening of international travel, including testing and vaccination.
“We think it’s critical that this happen, hopefully before the upcoming holidays,” Pinkerton said. “So many families have been separated for literally almost years now.”
For foreign nationals in the U.S. desperate to see their families, any new requirements that might accompany the lifting of travel restrictions are welcome.
“We’d undergo any kind of, whatever ordeal, it would take,” Sibner said. “My father, he hasn’t seen his grandchildren in two years now. My mother hasn’t seen her grandchildren in three years now, and they’re all back there, you know they would do anything, they would quarantine for two weeks if they had to.”
Sibner concluded, “We’d be willing to go through a lot.”