Flying to the United States will be easier from Sunday. The Biden administration announced this Friday the imminent lifting of the rule that requires international passengers to have a negative test the day before the trip. This was reported by the White House.
Airlines and other companies linked to the travel and tourism industry had been pressing for this change for months, arguing that this would only cause damage to these businesses, heavily hit by the pandemic, without the measure would now be based on scientific data.
This regulation was put in place by Donald Trump when he was president, but last year it was reinforced by his successor, who introduced this requirement for incoming travellers, including US citizens, that they must prove a negative result in a test taken the day before departure. journey.
Official sources indicated that this measure will expire on Sunday at zero hours and one second. He argued that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has determined that it was no longer a necessary regulation. The CDC will reevaluate the need for testing every 90 days and could be reinstated if a new variant causes problems.
The Biden administration reinforced this measure last year in the face of the increase in covid cases, despite the vaccines. His decision meant, however, lifting the ban on the entry of non-essential travelers across the board from a string of countries, including Europeans, and instead focused on classifying each individual by level of risk.
This came in combination with the requirement that non-immigrant foreign travelers traveling to the US had to be vaccinated, with few exceptions. This mandate allowed those who had received the immunogen to be able to travel with that negative test from the previous day, lowering the previous limit of three. Despite the improvement, that obligation remained a burden for travelers.
Airlines and tourism business groups have been exerting pressure because they considered that this obligation to test discouraged international passengers. Most countries lifted a restriction of this type long ago for those who had the vaccine guideline and this gave a boost to the tourism industry.
According to these pressure groups, the test was an obsolete requirement because a high number of cases of the omicron variant were not prevented in all states, due to the high vaccination rates in other countries (especially European ones such as Spain) and the existence of new treatments against coronavirus
