The Biden administration is dropping the requirement that international travelers test negative for COVID-19 within a day of flying to the United States, thereby ending one of the last remaining government restrictions aimed at controlling the coronavirus’s spread.
The obligation will terminate early Sunday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The health service stated that it will continue to evaluate the pandemic’s progress and will reevaluate the need for testing if the situation changes.
“The progress we’ve made in our fight against COVID-19 has allowed us to take this step,” stated US Health Secretary Xavier Becerra.
For months, airline and tourism businesses have lobbied the administration to remove the testing requirement, claiming that it discourages people from booking international trips because they risk being stuck abroad if they get the virus while on vacation.
The easing of the testing rule, according to Roger Dow, president of the United States Travel Association, is “another big step forward for the recovery of inbound air travel and the return of international travel to the United States.”
Airlines argued that the law was enacted at a time when few Americans were completely vaccinated; according to CDC estimates, 71 percent of people aged 5 and older are now fully immunized. They also expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that those entering the United States through land borders are not obliged to test negative for COVID-19, despite the fact that they must present proof of immunization.
While domestic travel in the United States has virtually recovered to pre-pandemic levels, foreign travel, which is extremely profitable for airlines, has continued to lag. According to the trade group Airlines for America, U.S. international air travel remained 24 percent below 2019 levels in May, with losses among both U.S. and foreign people.
In order to stimulate tourism, many other nations have relaxed their testing criteria for fully vaccinated passengers.
Some infectious-disease experts said they were satisfied with the CDC’s decision, and that lifting the ban is unlikely to result in the virus spreading further in the United States.
The rule, according to Vanderbilt University’s Dr. William Schaffner, was supposed to prevent the virus from being imported, but “we’ve got plenty of COVID here.” It’s the same of instructing someone not to pour a pail of water into their pool.”
Travel restrictions, according to Dr. Peter Chin-Hong of the University of California, San Francisco, show that government are trying to keep variations out, but “they haven’t really demonstrated to be beneficial, ever.” Nevertheless, requiring foreign visitors to be vaccinated makes sense, he said, in order to prevent putting a pressure on the US health-care system by bringing in people who could develop serious disease.
The necessity for a negative COVID-19 test before travelling to the United States has been in place since January 2021, and it is the most conspicuous pandemic-era travel restriction still in place.
A federal judge in Florida ruled in April that the CDC had overstepped its authority by requiring travelers to wear masks on aircraft and public transportation. The Biden administration has filed an appeal, claiming that it wants to maintain the CDC’s ability to respond to future health crises.
The testing requirement was put in place by the Biden government as it moved away from rules that prohibited nonessential travel from dozens of countries, including the majority of Europe, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Iran, and instead focused on classifying people based on the risk they pose to others. It was accompanied by a requirement that non-immigrant foreign adults going to the United States be completely vaccinated, with just a few exceptions.
Those who had been fully vaccinated may produce proof of a negative test within 3 days of travel, but those who had not been fully vaccinated had to show proof of a test done within one day of flight.
The Biden office reinforced the requirement in November, as the highly communicable omicron variant swept the globe, requiring all travelers — regardless of vaccination status — to test negative within a day of arriving in the United States.
Due to the obvious huge number of omicron cases existing in every state, higher vaccination rates, and new therapies for the virus, travel groups argued in February that the testing requirement was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, tourists devised ingenious ways to circumvent the rule. Several National Hockey League teams in Canada flew to locations near the border this spring, then boarded buses into the United States to avoid losing players who tested positive.
According to US airlines, removing the test requirement will result in an increase of 4.3 million passengers in a year.
However, it is unclear if airlines will be able to add aircraft capacity rapidly enough to manage such a surge. Airlines who are experiencing a pilot shortage have already reduced their intended summer vacation timetables.
The administration was also urged by hotels, theme parks, and other tourist industries to repeal the rule.
