U.S. TO LIFT AIR TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS FOR FULLY VACCINATED FOREIGN TRAVELERS
November 1, 2021
On Monday, October 25, 2021, the Biden administration along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) announced further details on their collective plan to ease air travel restrictions for fully vaccinated foreign nationals beginning November 8, 2021. In addition to details on the plan, the administration also released three implementation documents including a presidential proclamation on the safe resumption of international travel, three CDC Orders on vaccination, testing, and contact tracing, and technical instructions for airlines and travelers.
Notably, there will be no standardized or digital system for airlines to use to verify if international travelers coming to the U.S. are vaccinated. Instead, carriers will be tasked with determining if passenger vaccine credentials are authentic by making a determination that they were issued by a “credible source” and have matching name and date of birth information to the passengers’ other credentials. Other changes included in the new guidelines and CDC Orders include the following: (a) a new vaccination and testing requirement, which will require that all non-citizen, non-immigrant air travelers to the U.S. show proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 before boarding a U.S.-bound flight, with limited exceptions; (b) a new testing protocol, which will require unvaccinated U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and a small number of excepted unvaccinated foreign nationals to show proof of a negative COVID test within one day of departure to be able to travel to the U.S. (in which case both PCR tests and antigen tests are accepted); (c) newly designated exceptions to the vaccine requirement guidelines, which includes exemptions for children under 18, people who have experienced severe anaphylactic allergic reactions to a prior COVID vaccine, and people who are travelling from countries with low availability of COVID vaccines; and (d) new requirements for contact tracing, which now include requirements that all airlines flying into the U.S. be willing and able to provide the CDC with contact information for passengers, as needed, to allow public health officials to contact inbound air travelers in the event they are exposed or potentially exposed to a person who has tested positive for COVID. According to the CDC’s Orders, accepted vaccines will include all those that have been approved or authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) and those designated by the World Health Organization (“WHO”) for emergency use. Both digital and paper certificates of vaccination will be accepted. Travelers from countries with low vaccine rates (i.e. those with less than 10 percent of its population vaccinated) will still need to show a “compelling reason” to avoid compliance with the new vaccine requirements. Additionally, fully vaccinated passengers, regardless of citizenship, will still be required to show proof of a negative COVID test taken no more than three days before boarding their flight to the U.S.
The U.S. government announced earlier this month that it would lift the country-based travel bans by replacing the bans with vaccine requirements for incoming passengers.
If you have any questions, please contact Evelyn Sahr (esahr@eckertseamans.com or 202-659-6622); Drew Derco (dderco@eckertseamans.com or 202-659-6665), or Andy Orr (aorr@eckertsemans.com or 202-659-6625).
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