Indians exempted from stern US air travel curbs, new rules from Nov 8
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Washington: The United States issued an order imposing new vaccine requirements for most foreign national air travellers and lifting the severe restrictions on China, India and many European countries effective from November 8, Reuters reported.
The White House said that President Joe Biden signed the order on Monday.
Biden said that it is the interest of the United States to retract from the country-by-country restrictions previously applied during the Covid-19 situation and adopt an air travel policy based on vaccination so that international air travel to the US is resumed.
Children under 18 are exempt from the new vaccination requirements, as well as people with medical issues, White House said. Non-tourist travellers from 50 countries with national vaccination rates of less than 10% will also be exempted from the requirements. But those who got an exemption need to be vaccinated if they intend to stay in the US for more than 60 days.
The government also listed the requirements airlines should follow to confirm foreign travellers that whether they have been vaccinated before boarding flights to the US. Ensuring that foreign travellers are aware of the new vaccines rules that will take effect in two weeks is a concern for both the US administration and airlines.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday issued new contact tracing rules making airlines collect information from international air passengers to follow up with travellers who have been exposed to Covid-19 variants or other pathogens. Recently, the CDC said that it would accept any vaccine authorised by US regulators or the Worl Health Organisation (WHO) and will also accept mixed-dose corona vaccines from travellers.
Foreign air travellers will have to produce vaccination documents from an official source, and airlines must confirm the last dose was taken at least two weeks earlier than the date of the journey. Also, these travellers should have a Covid-19 negative certificate taken within 72 hours before departure. And in the case of those who received exemptions, unvaccinated Americans and foreign nationals have to produce Covid-19 negative certificates taken within 24 hours of departure.
The White House has first announced on September 20 that it would remove restrictions by early November for fully vaccinated air travellers from 33 countries. The US had imposed strict travel restrictions in early 2020 to check the spread of Covid-19. The rules had barred most non-US citizens who spend the last 14 days in the United Kingdom, the 26 Schengen countries in Europe without border controls, Ireland, China, India, South Africa, Iran and Brazil.
