Washington President Joe Biden will sign executive measures to impose COVID-19 travel restrictions on non-US travelers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, the White House announced on Monday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also confirmed that South Africa would be added to the limited list due to concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond the country.
“This is not the time to lift restrictions on international travel,” Psaki said in a press release.
The leading American expert on infectious diseases, dr. Anthony Fauci, in a round of television interviews on Monday, made a cautious decision about Mr. Biden said.
“We are concerned about the mutation in South Africa,” Fauci told CBS this morning. “We are looking at it very actively. It is clearly different and more ominous than the one in the UK, and I think it is very sensible to restrict non-citizen travel.”
Mr. Biden reverses an order from President Donald Trump in his last term that requested the easing of travel restrictions from Tuesday. Mr. Trump’s move was made in conjunction with a new requirement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all international travelers to the U.S. must receive a negative test for COVID-19 within three days of boarding their flight.
The team of mr. Biden has announced that it will reintroduce travel restrictions, but the addition of South Africa to the limited travel list underscores the new government’s concerns about mutations in the virus.
The South African variant was not discovered in the United States, but another variant – originating from the United Kingdom – has been detected in several states.
Fauci said that the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against the variant “is a very small, modest reduction”, but “there are enough pillows with the vaccines that we still consider to be effective against the British strain and the south. . African tension. ‘
But he warned that more mutations were possible and said scientists were preparing to adjust the vaccines if necessary.
“We really need to make sure we get started, and we need to prepare it already if necessary to upgrade the vaccines,” Fauci said. “We are already taking steps in that direction despite the fact that the vaccines we have now are working.”