US President Joe Biden will sign executive orders for economic aid to families and businesses affected by Covid on January 22, 2021 in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden will sign a travel ban on Monday on most non-US citizens entering the country who were recently in South Africa, where a new strain of Covid-19 has been identified, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC .
Biden will also restore travel restrictions on entry for non-US nationals from the UK and Brazil, where new Covid tribes have emerged. The restrictions will also apply to Ireland and much of Europe. President Donald Trump had lifted the restrictions just before Biden took office.
Reuters first reported news about the travel restrictions on Sunday.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, chief deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the outlet that the agency was “ implementing this set of measures to protect Americans and also to reduce the risk of these variants spreading and the current pandemic. . “
Before Biden took office, incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized Trump’s move to lift international travel restrictions, even as more contagious variants surfaced around the world.
“We plan to strengthen public health policies around international travel to further reduce the spread of Covid-19,” Psaki wrote in a tweet.
Trump issued a proclamation last Monday to lift the travel restrictions his administration had put in place at the start of the pandemic for most non-US citizens who had been in much of Europe, the UK and Brazil as of January 26.
That’s when the U.S. government requires air travelers, including U.S. citizens, to show recent, negative Covid-19 test results before boarding flights to the U.S.
White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, has said that available vaccines appear to be less effective against new, more contagious strains of Covid-19, but they will likely still provide enough protection to be worth getting.
The CDC also announced on Sunday that it will remove the option for airlines operating flights from countries lacking Covid-19 tests to apply for temporary waivers for some travelers. The agency will execute the order on Tuesday.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the virus has infected more than 25 million people and killed at least 417,000 people in the US since the start of the pandemic.
The US has not yet detected any cases of the South African variant, but several states have discovered the British variant.