Sep 15, 2021, 1:47 pm
Last edit by: NewbieRunner
New thread for discussing 1-day test requirements for travellers arriving in the US by air
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/coronavirus-travel/2060730-us-require-air-travelers-provide-negative-test-within-1-day-departure.html
Entry ban from eight southern African countries starting on November 29, 2021
Most non-U.S. citizens who have been in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique or Malaw within the prior 14 days will not be allowed into the United States.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/11/26/a-proclamation-on-suspension-of-entry-as-immigrants-and-nonimmigrants-of-certain-additional-persons-who-pose-a-risk-of-transmitting-coronavirus-disease-2019/
Entry ban by air to be lifted on November 8, 2021 - All travelers should refer to CDC for travel requirements.
3 day pre-flight testing requirement will continue (US citizens/LPR not vaccinated will have to test no earlier than 1 day prior) Children under 2 years old do not need to test.
Children under 18 are exempt from vaccination requirement
Accepted vaccines will include:
There is a face mask mandate when flying to/from the USA, with effectively no exemptions, and including children two and above years old
Airlines need to provide some sort of contact tracing information for potential follow-up cases
Update on U.S. travel policy requiring COVID-19 vaccination
Last Updated: October 25, 2021
As announced by the White House today, the new travel policy requiring foreign nationals traveling to the United States to demonstrate proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 will take effect November 8. The CDC’s website explains that, for purposes of entry into the United States, the accepted vaccines will include FDA approved or authorized and WHO Emergency Use Listing vaccines.
COVID-19 Travel Restrictions and Exceptions - U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs
Last updated: October 25, 2021
The presidential proclamations described on this page will no longer be in effect on November 8, 2021. For additional information, please see Safely Resuming Travel by Vaccine Requirement and Rescission of Travel Restrictions on Brazil, China, India, Iran, Ireland, the Schengen Area, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (travel.state.gov).
To protect the public health, there are four presidential proclamations that suspend entry into the United States of all noncitizens who were physically present in any of 33 countries during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States. They are Presidential Proclamation 9984 (China); Presidential Proclamation 9992 (Iran); Presidential Proclamation 10143 (Schengen Area, United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, and South Africa); and Presidential Proclamation 10199 (India).
What we know so far is
- Confirmed to start on 8 November
- Children under 18 are exempt from the vaccine restrictions, so the varying international standards on jab ages won't be an issue here.
- Vaccines that are OK will include Pfizer, Moderna, AZ, J&J and the two Chinese vaccines.
- Some exemptions from vaccinations are potentially allowed, notably for US citizens, though my guess is airlines will be expecting to see vaccine certificates
- 3 day pre-flight testing requirement will continue, so this needs to be a documented antigen/Lateral Flow test or PCR.
- 3 days is potentially more than 72 hours, departure on a Friday afternoon means a test on Tuesday morning or thereafter.
- NHS Lateral Flows and PCRs can't be used.
- Children over 2 years old travelling with vaccinated travellers have to be tested on the same basis (3 days).
- 1 day testing for unvaccinated USA legal residents (testing on or the day before departure), including their children.
- All passengers need to sign an attestment to confirm their negative test result and also a statement to confirm full vaccination status.
- Children who are not vaccinated do not need to get vaccinated but do need to get a "viral test" 3 to 5 days after arrival in the USA
- As a result there is a separate attestion question for unvaccinated children to confirm that the viral test is arranged.
- Vaccination certificates must come from an official source. The NHS COVID Pass app and EU DCC are specifically mentioned as acceptable.
- Vaccination is counted as two weeks from dose2, or 2 weeks after the sole dose in the case of J&J.
- Antibody certification is not a replacement for the need for vaccination, at least for non USA residents.
- 14 clear days need to elapse before travel. So if jabbed on 1 October then 15 October is when you are good to go.
- Booster vaccinations are not a factor here, they don't count towards or against the primary dose process.
- There is a face mask mandate when flying to/from the USA, with effectively no exemptions, and including children two and above years old.
- Airlines need to provide some sort of contact tracing information for potential follow-up cases.
- These restrictions do not apply at the land border.
Note that a lot of interpretation onus falls on airlines. For example there is no language requirement for vaccine certificates as far as the CDC is concerned, however you can imagine Air France may be hesitant in accepting a vaccine certificate issued in the Welsh language, to take one example.
CDC link
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2...el-System.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/coronavirus-travel/2060730-us-require-air-travelers-provide-negative-test-within-1-day-departure.html
Entry ban from eight southern African countries starting on November 29, 2021
Most non-U.S. citizens who have been in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique or Malaw within the prior 14 days will not be allowed into the United States.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/11/26/a-proclamation-on-suspension-of-entry-as-immigrants-and-nonimmigrants-of-certain-additional-persons-who-pose-a-risk-of-transmitting-coronavirus-disease-2019/
Entry ban by air to be lifted on November 8, 2021 - All travelers should refer to CDC for travel requirements.
3 day pre-flight testing requirement will continue (US citizens/LPR not vaccinated will have to test no earlier than 1 day prior) Children under 2 years old do not need to test.
Children under 18 are exempt from vaccination requirement
Accepted vaccines will include:
- AstraZeneca
- BIBP/Sinopharm
- Covishield
- Janssen/J&J
- Moderna
- Pfizer-BioNTech
- Sinovac
There is a face mask mandate when flying to/from the USA, with effectively no exemptions, and including children two and above years old
Airlines need to provide some sort of contact tracing information for potential follow-up cases
Update on U.S. travel policy requiring COVID-19 vaccination
Last Updated: October 25, 2021
As announced by the White House today, the new travel policy requiring foreign nationals traveling to the United States to demonstrate proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 will take effect November 8. The CDC’s website explains that, for purposes of entry into the United States, the accepted vaccines will include FDA approved or authorized and WHO Emergency Use Listing vaccines.
COVID-19 Travel Restrictions and Exceptions - U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs
Last updated: October 25, 2021
The presidential proclamations described on this page will no longer be in effect on November 8, 2021. For additional information, please see Safely Resuming Travel by Vaccine Requirement and Rescission of Travel Restrictions on Brazil, China, India, Iran, Ireland, the Schengen Area, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (travel.state.gov).
To protect the public health, there are four presidential proclamations that suspend entry into the United States of all noncitizens who were physically present in any of 33 countries during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States. They are Presidential Proclamation 9984 (China); Presidential Proclamation 9992 (Iran); Presidential Proclamation 10143 (Schengen Area, United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, and South Africa); and Presidential Proclamation 10199 (India).
What we know so far is
- Confirmed to start on 8 November
- Children under 18 are exempt from the vaccine restrictions, so the varying international standards on jab ages won't be an issue here.
- Vaccines that are OK will include Pfizer, Moderna, AZ, J&J and the two Chinese vaccines.
- Some exemptions from vaccinations are potentially allowed, notably for US citizens, though my guess is airlines will be expecting to see vaccine certificates
- 3 day pre-flight testing requirement will continue, so this needs to be a documented antigen/Lateral Flow test or PCR.
- 3 days is potentially more than 72 hours, departure on a Friday afternoon means a test on Tuesday morning or thereafter.
- NHS Lateral Flows and PCRs can't be used.
- Children over 2 years old travelling with vaccinated travellers have to be tested on the same basis (3 days).
- 1 day testing for unvaccinated USA legal residents (testing on or the day before departure), including their children.
- All passengers need to sign an attestment to confirm their negative test result and also a statement to confirm full vaccination status.
- Children who are not vaccinated do not need to get vaccinated but do need to get a "viral test" 3 to 5 days after arrival in the USA
- As a result there is a separate attestion question for unvaccinated children to confirm that the viral test is arranged.
- Vaccination certificates must come from an official source. The NHS COVID Pass app and EU DCC are specifically mentioned as acceptable.
- Vaccination is counted as two weeks from dose2, or 2 weeks after the sole dose in the case of J&J.
- Antibody certification is not a replacement for the need for vaccination, at least for non USA residents.
- 14 clear days need to elapse before travel. So if jabbed on 1 October then 15 October is when you are good to go.
- Booster vaccinations are not a factor here, they don't count towards or against the primary dose process.
- There is a face mask mandate when flying to/from the USA, with effectively no exemptions, and including children two and above years old.
- Airlines need to provide some sort of contact tracing information for potential follow-up cases.
- These restrictions do not apply at the land border.
Note that a lot of interpretation onus falls on airlines. For example there is no language requirement for vaccine certificates as far as the CDC is concerned, however you can imagine Air France may be hesitant in accepting a vaccine certificate issued in the Welsh language, to take one example.
CDC link
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2...el-System.html
US reopened on 8 November 2021 (& subsequent entry restrictions for non-citizens)
May 12, 2021, 9:57 am
#121
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 1,333
May 12, 2021, 9:57 am
#122
Join Date: Aug 2020
Posts: 5
There is NO science to any of this, it is all political. Case in point, passengers of ANY nationality can fly freely between the US and Mexico with a COVID Test, no quarantine. Mexico is not exactly COVID free. BUT...If I fly from Mexico City to Frankfurt, change planes and transit for 2 hours and then fly on to the US, United will not allow me to board as I have been physically present in the EU by virtue of sitting at the gate in FRA. Ridiculous. I can fly from the UEA, which literally has NO Covid, economy fully open and has the highest vaccination rate on the planet behind Israel as 90% of Emiratis are vaccinated, direct to JFK on Emirates no problem, the plane stops to refuel in Zurich and I am screwed as a non citizen of the US.
May 12, 2021, 10:08 am
#123
Join Date: May 2010
Location: TPA
Programs: All The Programs
Posts: 2,204
I don't know if I'd agree there is "no" science.
But I agree it's very inconsistent (and illogical).
I think a better example is the CDC and cruise lines. How can it be OK to fly right now .... but not OK to be within 6' of another person outside on a cruise ship? Does an airplane somehow have more fresh air than the actual fresh air?
The CDC really needs to address these things, else they will lose credibility.
But I agree it's very inconsistent (and illogical).
I think a better example is the CDC and cruise lines. How can it be OK to fly right now .... but not OK to be within 6' of another person outside on a cruise ship? Does an airplane somehow have more fresh air than the actual fresh air?
The CDC really needs to address these things, else they will lose credibility.
May 12, 2021, 10:40 am
#124
Suspended
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Canada, USA, Europe
Programs: UA 1K
Posts: 31,452
Not at all, a week tomorrow Spain will be totally open, how long before Greece, Portugal, Italy all follow, it'll be damn quick.
The US is against vaccine passports from the get go and if other countries remove restrictions so will they.
Before you know it, any country asking for vaccines or PCR tests will be in the minority..
The US is against vaccine passports from the get go and if other countries remove restrictions so will they.
Before you know it, any country asking for vaccines or PCR tests will be in the minority..
May 12, 2021, 11:32 am
#125
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: London & Sonoma CA
Programs: UA 1K, MM *G for life, BAEC Gold
Posts: 10,224
While I 100% agree that hospitalization tests were kind of the gold standard in normalizing covid across countries, I don't think that's true as much anymore, because it's going to depend on what you are looking to measure.
Hospitalizations are good for measuring the effect of covid on your population. If you get hospitalizations down to a manageable level, then the public health emergency goes away and need for draconian social distancing measures decreases significantly. You can do this via vaccination or burning covid through your population so nobody is left to get seriously sick.
# of tests (but, I prefer test positivity) is an indication of how contagious your population is to a different population, and probably affects ability of various countries opening up to one another. In an age where we didn't have vaccines, these two metrics were intertwined. But since vaccinces stop the majority of poor outcomes while only mitigating the infection rate, and ironically meaning more asymptomatics, these two metrics are now diverging. So, some sense of the spread of active covid is necessary to allow those countries with low infection rates AND low vaccination rates decide of others are safe to come in.
Hospitalizations are good for measuring the effect of covid on your population. If you get hospitalizations down to a manageable level, then the public health emergency goes away and need for draconian social distancing measures decreases significantly. You can do this via vaccination or burning covid through your population so nobody is left to get seriously sick.
# of tests (but, I prefer test positivity) is an indication of how contagious your population is to a different population, and probably affects ability of various countries opening up to one another. In an age where we didn't have vaccines, these two metrics were intertwined. But since vaccinces stop the majority of poor outcomes while only mitigating the infection rate, and ironically meaning more asymptomatics, these two metrics are now diverging. So, some sense of the spread of active covid is necessary to allow those countries with low infection rates AND low vaccination rates decide of others are safe to come in.
Encouragingly, in the UK with over two thirds of adults at least partially vaccinated, the numbers are doing exactly should be expected given the vaccines' efficacy. Case rates are now stable or rising slightly from a very low level, but hospitalisations are declining. It seems that California is in a similar position but many states are only at the start of this journey.
May 12, 2021, 12:20 pm
#126
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: DCA/IAD
Programs: AS, US, Hilton, BA, DL, SPG, AA, VS
Posts: 1,628
May 12, 2021, 12:58 pm
#127
Suspended
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,095
Researchers from the RAND Corporation, the nonprofit research group based in Santa Monica, California, polled more than 2,000 Americans in May 2020 and questioned most again five months later. Respondents were asked to rate their trust of the CDC, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency on a low-to-high scale of 0 to 10. During the survey period, trust in the CDC dropped about 10 percent -- from 7.6 points on the 10-point scale in May to 7.0 in October 2020. Meanwhile, trust in the postal service rose from 6.9 to 7.7 and trust in FEMA rose from 6.4 to 6.7, even though both had challenges of their own during the study period.
.......
The researchers said [the demographic difference] suggests views about the CDC are now strongly politicized. The investigators did not find similar politicization for FEMA or the USPS.
.......
The researchers said [the demographic difference] suggests views about the CDC are now strongly politicized. The investigators did not find similar politicization for FEMA or the USPS.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_r...RRA308-12.html
The CDC has enough credibility that it's not being ignored by those in the US federal government. There is no credible replacement for the CDC.
Last edited by GUWonder; May 12, 2021 at 1:08 pm
May 12, 2021, 4:49 pm
#128
Join Date: Apr 2020
Posts: 73
PBS has got this scoop from Diplomatic Sources;
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u...l-restrictions
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u...l-restrictions
May 12, 2021, 5:57 pm
#129
Suspended
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,095
PBS has got this scoop from Diplomatic Sources;
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u...l-restrictions
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u...l-restrictions
It doesn't say much about anything about a US opening other than what was already a given: that airlines and others are putting pressure on the respective ministries/departments on both sides of the Atlantic to push forward an opening and figure out the timing and conditions for an opening. The "urgent" aspect seems like a play to put out language and a show of sort that appeals to corporate and individual constituents wanting something done sooner than later so as to plan for what comes ahead.
A US opening to UK tourists coming from the UK on May 17th? Is that the scoop?
Originally Posted by PBS
He also said he anticipated Johnson would raise the idea, as well urge the lifting of restrictions, with Biden when they meet on the margins of the G7 Summit in Cornwall, England in early June, “if there have been no positive developments by that point.”
Last edited by GUWonder; May 12, 2021 at 6:20 pm
May 12, 2021, 7:10 pm
#130
Suspended
Join Date: Feb 2009
Programs: DL, UA, AA, VS
Posts: 5,226
PBS has got this scoop from Diplomatic Sources;
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u...l-restrictions
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u...l-restrictions
US numbers are improving but probably still higher than the Biden administration would like to see.
Also slowdown of vaccinations rates in recent weeks.
So they may want to play it safe but a month from now, when he's in Cornwall, maybe the situation will be improved enough.
May 12, 2021, 9:43 pm
#131
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: LAX
Posts: 3,267
I think it's just inertia. Also, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines' performance vs the UK variant was a question mark until the last 6 weeks or so. Now we have a lot more real world data showing that the vaccines are nearly as effective as they are against the Wuhan strain.
May 13, 2021, 2:15 am
#132
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: London & Sonoma CA
Programs: UA 1K, MM *G for life, BAEC Gold
Posts: 10,224
I think it's just inertia. Also, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines' performance vs the UK variant was a question mark until the last 6 weeks or so. Now we have a lot more real world data showing that the vaccines are nearly as effective as they are against the Wuhan strain.
May 13, 2021, 3:38 am
#133
Join Date: May 2008
Location: ARN
Posts: 3,471
All viruses produce different variants. That's the reason why the flu vaccine is sometimes only 20% effective. In the lab world, the covid vaccines were reported to be more than 90% effective, but in the real world, when everybody has finally been vaccinated, there will be new mutations that bypass the vaccines. If we need to wait and see if the vaccines will work against the Indian variant before opening up the borders for tourism, we can wait forever, because after the Indian variant there will be a German variant, a Mexican variant, a Japanese variant, a Californian variant, a Nigerian variant, etc. etc.
May 13, 2021, 4:40 am
#134
Join Date: Jan 2021
Location: Milan, Italy
Programs: Skymiles
Posts: 271
All viruses produce different variants. That's the reason why the flu vaccine is sometimes only 20% effective. In the lab world, the covid vaccines were reported to be more than 90% effective, but in the real world, when everybody has finally been vaccinated, there will be new mutations that bypass the vaccines. If we need to wait and see if the vaccines will work against the Indian variant before opening up the borders for tourism, we can wait forever, because after the Indian variant there will be a German variant, a Mexican variant, a Japanese variant, a Californian variant, a Nigerian variant, etc. etc.
Variants have always existed, they are part of the evolution of every virus. To date they are a huge bull...t that is artfully extracted by those who have an interest in this emergency never ending and to keep people at the mercy of political / health power.
Thousands of variants of COVID19 have already been discovered, what do we do? Do we keep the world locked forever? Stop the bull...t please.
May 13, 2021, 4:58 am
#135
Join Date: Aug 2018
Posts: 46
Covid is here forever now, there will constantly be new variants emerging moving forwards. Its never going to be eradicated.
By the end of this month in the US, by the end of June in the UK, and by the end of July in the EU everyone who wants a vaccine will have gotten one. At that stage we either open the borders to each other and go back to "normal" life or we never will.
By the end of this month in the US, by the end of June in the UK, and by the end of July in the EU everyone who wants a vaccine will have gotten one. At that stage we either open the borders to each other and go back to "normal" life or we never will.