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Today, the Biden administration announced that, starting Sunday at 12:01am EDT, there will no longer be a COVID testing requirement to enter the United States. This puts the US in line with both the EU and Canada, who dropped testing requirements for entry earlier this year.
Since January 2021, the US has required that all travelers obtain a negative COVID test within one day of boarding their flight to the country. Initially the requirement was to obtain a negative test within three days of travel, but in November of 2021 that changed to one day for unvaccinated travelers and in December it changed again to one day for everyone. There’s no word on if there will be any change to the current vaccination requirement for non-residents who enter the US.
It’s not clear if 12:01am Sunday refers to a flight’s arrival or departure, but my guess is that we’ll find that out today sometime.
The move comes after months of intense lobbying from travel groups, hotels and airlines who argued that, given the lack of any internal restrictions within the country, the testing mandate had minimal impact on the spread of COVID within the US.
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Sleepy Joe finally realized that he needed some good news with all of the bad press he is getting lately. As usual too little to late for this presidency to save the midterms.
What about non-citizens having to be vaccinated, no exceptions?
No change has been announced yet.
Yeehaw. Fly back from MEX on Tuesday and just in time to not have to test!
Best news this year.
Finally!!!
Of course, just finished a European vacation yesterday! LOL
I completed 3 international trips under the testing requirement. It is always stressful wondering if you get to go home or not…..and thinking what in the heck are you supposed to do if you test positive….
But all this led to major testing shams; I had numerous friends visit Mexico and they were always told “Don’t worry, the test will be negative.” Pretty much my experience when I did one in Croatia last year, too. Last 2 trips I used Emed, and the reality if you can basically barely stick that swab in your nose which I’m sure helps assure a negative test.
I’m so glad common sense has finally prevailed. I recently saw some public health folks trying to defend it since transmission has been shown on planes. However, that was not the reason for this; it was to prevent variants from spreading. If they were serious about preventing transmission on all flights, you’d need to test every person on every flight, including domestic. If you are not going to do that, it never made much sense! For variant prevention of spread, you’d probably need all countries doing it, and that also was not happening.
I’ve never seen so much bad government policy in my life!
Couldn’t agree more with everything you said. If they were serious, everyone entering the country would have to test, including by land and sea. How many (probably) millions of people cross the border weekly without having to test. It was all a sham.
Yep, the land border part was nuts if the logic is to prevent variants….clearly those variants could only be spread over borders by plane, I guess…. 🙂
I think the original intention was good, but it wasn’t effective at preventing any additional spread. The policy went on for too long and it became a financial scam at airports. It was fine for a while, but outlived the usefulness is all.