The United States will open its borders to fully inoculated foreign visitors against Covid-19 from November 8 after a ban of 18 months on travel from much of the globe.
In a tweet, the White House assistant press secretary Kevin Munoz announced the new policy and said the decision of easing restrictions was “guided by public health, stringent and consistent.
“Announcement and date apply to both international air travel and land travel,” he said.
There’re no technical and logistical details of the new policy yet. However, officials had previously outlined it, saying that vaccinated air passengers will require to be tested within three days before travel. Airlines will be required to put a contact tracing system in place.
Us health officials have clarified that all vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) would be accepted for entry by air.
The new policy was quickly hailed by the EU’s ambassador in the US, Stavros Lambrinidis, who called it “important and very welcome news” and wrote in a Twitter post.
The US closed its borders after March 2020 to travellers from large parts of the world, including the EU, Britain, China, India and Brazil, to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Visitors from Mexico and Canada were not also allowed.
The months of restrictions affected hundreds of millions of people due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier this week, a White House source had revealed that the land border opening would take place in two phases.
The second phase is likely to begin in early January 2022, and it will need all visitors to be fully vaccinated to enter the US by land, irrespective of the reason for their trip.
Last month, the White House said it had planned to relax travel restrictions that prohibited most non-U.S. citizens who had recently been in Europe, Brazil, South Africa and elsewhere, in early November. The Trump administration set the rules early in the pandemic and extended them by the new Biden cabinet in the winter.
Inbound travellers, including US citizens, still need to present a negative Covid test report from abroad to travel to the US.
