Americans who travel abroad during the coronavirus pandemic must test negative or “present proof of having recovered from COVID-19” prior to returning to the United States, according to new Biden administration regulations.
“This rule applies to all travelers, 2 and over, including U.S. citizens,” acting Assistant Secretary Ian Brownlee, who leads the State Department’s consular affairs desk, told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “If you cannot easily access a COVID-19 test, or, if you test positive, you will end up overseas for much longer than you planned.”
The test must be taken “within three days of boarding” the flight under the new rules, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. U.S. health officials anchored the regulations in their desire to forestall the spread of troublesome coronavirus variants in the U.S.
“They’re potentially more contagious than the current circulating predominant virus,” Marty Cetron, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global migration and quarantine director, told reporters on the same conference call. “Several of them have presented challenges … towards looking at our vaccine solutions, so we take these variants very seriously.”
A mutated form of the virus first identified in England drove the United Kingdom into a lockdown in early January amid a surge of infections “associated with an increased risk of death compared” to the original contagion, according to a recent analysis from British health officials.
Industry officials believe that the vaccines developed over the last year will prove effective against the variants — other mutations have been detected in South Africa and Brazil — but the South African mutation at least may necessitate supplemental vaccines.
“As we seek to defeat the COVID-19 virus, which has created a worldwide pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said on Monday.
Americans who test positive for the coronavirus shouldn’t expect much aid from the government, according to the officials, who also emphasized that medical care could prove to be much more expensive than it would at home.
“If … U.S. citizens are truly destitute overseas, we have mechanisms for providing loans to those people,” Brownlee said.
“And it is also important to note that the U.S. government cannot — does not and cannot — provide medical services overseas,” she added. “Medicare and Medicaid are not applicable overseas. Some U.S. insurance policies are, but not all.”
U.S. officials hope that the new preflight testing regiment will deter people from taking “discretionary” trips abroad during the pandemic.
“The bottom-line message is this: [It] is really not a time for people to be engaging in discretionary travel,” Cetron said. “All travel should be postponed until we get a better handle on getting this virus under control and accelerating our vaccination strategy.”
