The chief executive of an Australian airline said he thought ‘governments were going to insist’ on vaccinations for international travelers ‘as a condition of entry’.
Alan Joyce of Qantas Airways Limited told the BBC that he thought ‘if everyone was vaccinated’, governments would demand that international travelers be vaccinated if they wanted to enter a country. He said they may no longer be quarantined for 14 days in a hotel.
Even if some states oppose this policy, Joyce said he believes airlines should apply their own guidelines out of their “duty of care”.
“We are careful with our passengers and our crew to say that everyone on the plane should be safe,” Joyce said.
Joyce believes passengers will support this change. He said 90 percent of the people he surveyed found it a ‘good idea’.
“The vast majority of our customers find it a good idea. 90 percent of the people we surveyed think it should be a requirement that people be vaccinated to travel internationally,” Joyce said.
However, the World Health Organization is not on board with such a proposal. Bernardo Mariano, the organisation’s director of digital health and innovation, rejected the initiative, telling the BBC: “We do not approve of a vaccination passport being a condition of travel.”
He added that no matter what the public sector favored, such a change would require a “uniform approach to governments”, the BBC wrote.
The Hill issued the Centers for Disease Control for comment.
The airline industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, the Airports Council International – North America released a report finding that U.S. airports will need $ 115.4 billion in infrastructure investments over the next five years to address important needs, including improving the experience of the air passenger, increasing convenience, improving safety, expanding competition and lowering prices for travelers.
However, the industry has suffered a partial setback in recent weeks. The Transportation Security Administration reported Thursday that more than 1.4 million people traveled through U.S. airports on Wednesday, the eighth consecutive day that the travel volume was more than 1 million.
The last time airport activity was so high was the week of March 15, 2020, when more than 1.5 million people passed through TSA checkpoints before air travel closures and recommendations took effect.