White House to Lift the Country Specific Travel Ban and Acceptable Vaccines to be Considered Fully Vaccinated!
By
Dev Banad Viswanath
The White House has announced that a more individual responsibility travel system will take effect Nov. 8, allowing entry for fully vaccinated foreign tourists and other non immigrant or temporary visa holders. This is a welcome change from the last 20 months whereby roughly 33 countries at varying points have had blanketed restrictions for temporary travel to the US, unless there was proof that an applicant felling under a National Interest Exemption (NIE). This new rule will open up travel considerably, just in time for the holidays and before the start of 2022.
Having said the above, the decision will also make entry more challenging for the unvaccinated who don’t fall into an exception category or qualify for a waiver. The new practice will allow entry for foreign nationals only with vaccinations approved by the World Health Organization, CDC, and/or FDA and would also add testing requirements for unvaccinated Americans who are travelling abroad and returning home, or who are resident abroad and travelling into the United States.
Foreign nationals travelling into the U.S. will need to show proof of full vaccination as well as a pre-departure negative coronavirus RT PCR test taken within three days of travel before they can board a plane to the U.S. The govt is using 3 days instead of 72 hours to make it easier for travelers so they don’t have to account for time difference and travel, they can just gage dates.
Air Carriers will collect passenger information, including a phone number and email and address where people will be staying, from all U.S.-bound travelers for contact tracing. Air Carriers are required to keep the information on hand for 30 days so health officials can follow up with travelers who may have been exposed to COVID-19.
Masking will still be required, however there will be no quarantine mandate.
Vaccines that will be acceptable as proof for being full include:
- Johnson & Johnson
- Moderna
- Pfizer-BioNTech
- Oxford-AstraZeneca/Covishield
- Sinopharm
- Sinovac
Neither the White House nor the CDC has yet to release information on how people with vaccines not yet approved by WHO/FDA/CDC can enter the U.S. But it looks likely that additional guidance will be provided in the next few weeks. Indian nationals who have received Covaxin vaccination are yet to receive WHO approval to date.