US ends COVID-19 testing requirement for international travelers

Photo Credit: Bloomberg

The US Friday ended COVID-19 testing requirement for international travelers after months of strict enforcement that saw restriction of tourists and other travelers to the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky signed an order to end the requirement for international travelers to show a negative COVID-19 test or proof of recovery from the virus before boarding flights to the United States. 

The order takes effect on Sunday at 12:01 a.m., stressing that the United States was now in a different phase of the pandemic than when the requirement was put in place last year.

It reads “the Order was one of several actions taken by the federal government during earlier phases of the COVID-19 pandemic to help mitigate the further transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants into and within the United States. 

At that time, CDC concluded that it was a reasonable and necessary measure in light of the increased risk of transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants by international air travel into the United States, as well as the low rate of vaccination and infection-induced immunity in the United States, and emergence of new variants of concern”.

 

“Since then, many circumstances have changed, including the widespread uptake of effective COVID-19 vaccines and accompanying vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, as well as the availability of effective therapeutics,” the order noted.

In April a national mask mandate was quashed by a federal judge  but the Biden Administration has asked for the Judge’s ruling to be set aside in a brief it filed with a federal appeals court in May, NPR had reported.

The Biden administration had announced earlier on Friday that the requirement would be rescinded, with a senior administration official saying that the CDC had “determined based on the science and data that this requirement is no longer necessary at this time”, according to The Hill.