U.S. President Joe Biden signs executive orders of economic relief to families and businesses affected by Covid at the White House state dining hall in Washington, DC, on January 22, 2021.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden will sign on Monday a travel ban on the majority of non-Americans entering the country and who were recently in South Africa, where a new strain of Covid-19 has been identified, according to van two White House officials told NBC News.
Biden will also reinstate travel restrictions on the entry of non-US citizens from the UK, Ireland and much of Europe and Brazil. These restrictions had been lifted by former President Donald Trump just before Biden took office.
Reuters first reported travel restrictions on Sunday.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, senior deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the agency that the agency “is implementing this set of measures to protect Americans and also to reduce the risk that these variants spread and worsen the current pandemic. “
Before Biden took office, new White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized Trump’s decision to remove international travel restrictions, even though more contagious variants appeared around the world.
“We plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel to further mitigate the spread of Covid-19,” Psaki wrote in a tweet.
The White House health adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said available vaccines appear to be less effective against the new, more contagious strains of Covid-19, but that they will likely provide enough protection to be worth receiving.
The CDC also announced Sunday that it will remove the option for airlines with flights from countries that do not have Covid-19 tests to request temporary waivers for some travelers. The agency will implement the order on Tuesday.
The virus has infected more than 25 million people and killed at least 417,000 people in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The US has not yet detected any cases of the South African variant, but several states have detected the UK variant.