Federal health officials gave the green light Friday for fully vaccinated people to resume travel as an estimated 100 million Americans have had at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, and evidence mounts of the shots’ effectiveness.
© AP/AP Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a pandemic briefing. (White House via AP, File)The long-awaited guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is welcome news for the growing number of vaccinated adults who want greater freedom to visit family members and take vacations for the first time in a year. It is also expected to help boost the travel and airline industries that have been seeking a relaxation of restrictions. Until Friday’s announcement, officials were still discouraging people who had been fully vaccinated from traveling.
The agency updated its guidance because of several newly released studies documenting the strong real-world effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines in protecting against infection and spread of the virus, and the rapid pace of vaccinations, now close to 3 million people a day.
For domestic travel, people who are two weeks past their final shot do not need to get a coronavirus test before or after trips and do not need to self-quarantine after travel. That means grandparents who are fully vaccinated can fly to visit their grandchildren without getting a coronavirus test or self-quarantining, provided they follow the other recommended public health measures, such as wearing masks on planes, buses, trains and other forms of public transportation.
For international travel, fully vaccinated people do not need to be tested before their trips unless it is required by the destination, the guidance says. For their return to the United States, fully vaccinated people should get tested and have a negative result before they board an international flight back to the United States.
Nearly 40 percent of all adults have received at least one dose of a vaccine and more than 1 in 5 adults are now fully vaccinated, including more than half of seniors, according to the CDC. On Friday, the United States is expected to pass the milestone of 100 million people getting at least one dose.
“With millions of Americans getting vaccinated every day, it is important to update the public on the latest science about what fully vaccinated people can do safely, now including guidance on safe travel,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “We continue to encourage every American to get vaccinated as soon as it’s their turn, so we can begin to safely take steps back to our everyday lives. Vaccines can help us return to the things we love about life.”
Friday’s guidance builds on the agency’s initial recommendations last month that said fully vaccinated Americans can gather with other vaccinated people indoors without wearing a mask or social distancing. Those recommendations also say that vaccinated people can come together in the same way with unvaccinated members in one other household considered at low risk for severe disease, such as vaccinated grandparents visiting healthy children and grandchildren. Fully vaccinated people, the agency said, should keep following health and safety precautions in public, including wearing a mask.
Since the initial guidance was released March 8, the number of Americans who are fully vaccinated has almost doubled, to over 56 million people, or about 17 percent of the total population, according to the CDC.
Inoculation efforts in the United States have accelerated as states push to make more adults eligible for shots from one of three authorized vaccines, heeding a call from the president to rapidly expand eligibility. Virtually all states have announced that they have already or will open up eligibility to all those 16 and older by May 1. President Biden has set a goal to have 200 million doses administered under his presidency by April 30, and the nation is already poised to meet that target.
The agency updated its recommendations because of newly released studies showing the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines.
In a study released Monday of about 4,000 health-care personnel and essential workers, the CDC found the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines reduced the risk of infection by 80 percent two weeks after one shot. Protection increased to 90 percent two weeks after the second dose. The study is significant because it is one of the first to estimate vaccine effectiveness against infection — rather than just monitoring for symptomatic cases — including infections that resulted in no symptoms, according to the CDC.
On Thursday, new data from the ongoing trial of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has reinforced early results showing its high efficacy and provided the first hint that the vaccine may work against the more-virulent B. 1.351 variant first detected in South Africa, which has raised global alarm because it can evade some forms of immunity. The updated trial data was announced by news release from the U.S. firm Pfizer and the German company BioNTech and has yet to be peer-reviewed and published.
The updated guidance is another piece of good news for the air and travel industries, which have been pushing the CDC to update its recommendations. The shift is likely to give another boost to airlines, which last month recorded their best month for passenger traffic since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
Officials with the Transportation Security Administration said there were 26 days in March when more than a million people moved through security checkpoints. That number is still far below 2019 when TSA was routinely screening more than 2 million passengers a day, but significantly higher than this point last year. For example on April 1 of last year, only 124,021 people moved through those checkpoints.
The gains have largely been driven by domestic travelers; more lucrative business customers still have not returned. Even so, airlines executives are hopeful the spring travel boom will translate to a busy summer season.
In addition to urging the CDC to update its travel guidance for those who have been fully vaccinated, the industry is also pushing the administration to lift restrictions on international visitors.
Last month, a coalition of travel groups, including Airlines for America and the U.S. Travel Association, sent a four-page letter to Jeffrey Zients, the White House’s covid-19 response coordinator, saying they were eager to partner with the administration on a plan to reopen the U.S. to international visitors.
“We are ready to welcome back travelers and keep them safe,” the coalition wrote. “And the time to plan for and chart a defined road map to reopen international travel is now.”
In January, the Biden administration extended a ban on travelers from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 other European countries. The administration also added those who had recently been in South Africa to the list. The ban had been set to expire Jan. 26. The decision to extend it was part of an effort to help contain the spread of fast-moving variants.
The coalition said in the letter it hoped to have a plan by May 1 that could be implemented this summer, as long as “vaccine distribution and epidemiological trends continue in a positive direction.”
But doing away with the ban may prove trickier given infection trends in Europe, where several countries are reimposing restrictions because of a new surge.
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