While the news has been full of daily changes in the rules for Americans visiting other countries, there has been little news of when or how international visitors will be welcome in the U.S. again, but that may be about to change.
On Wednesday, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Jeffrey Zients, suggested that when visitors are allowed again, they will be required to have completed vaccinations and to take part in a new contact-tracing system to be run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Zients’ comments were made to a Commerce Department advisory panel on U.S. tourism issues. He told the panel that “We will also be putting in place contact tracing to enable CDC to follow up with inbound international travelers and those around them if someone has potentially been exposed to COVID-19, and we are exploring vaccination requirements for foreign nationals traveling to the United States.”
The system, if implemented, would open travel to the U.S. on more or less the same basis that is now being used by most European countries for U.S. visitors; after a period of accepting unvaccinated but tested travelers, most have now barred those without full vaccination.
A number of airlines in different parts of the world are also imposing vaccination requirements of their own. Qantas, whose international routes have been dormant throughout the pandemic, has said that when it resumes them in December, vaccination will be required. In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top infectious disease advisors to the President has supported a vaccination rule for domestic flights.
