The United States will be lifting its travel restrictions on Africa soon.
The travel ban on Africa is being reversed.
The United States finally lifted the country specific travel bans that were put in place at the start of the Pandemic. It made sense to require visitors to be vaccinations.
The United States put a new travel ban on Africa in late November in order to curb the spread of the omicron coronaviruses. The new rules for travelers from countries such as Zimbabwe, Eswatini, and Botswana went into effect on November 29, 2021.
Non-Americans who had been in any of the countries in the past 14 days could not enter the United States, even if they had been tested for vaccine.
The policy will be changing soon. The travel restrictions will be lifted by the Biden administration on December 31, 2021. The restrictions gave us time to understand Omicron and we know our existing vaccines work against it.
The travel ban on Africa is about to end.
These restrictions did not last long.
I am happy to see that the travel ban only lasted for a month, as it didn't make sense to begin with. I think travel bans don't accomplish much. In the case of this ban.
The ban was announced three days before it went into effect, causing many people to push forward their travels to the United States, and likely leading to more cases being imported on short notice.
Unlike South Africa, the US doesn't do a good job with analyzing tests to see what strain they are.
I think it is safe to say that the travel ban did not keep the variant out of our borders, as we saw over 265K new coronaviruses cases yesterday.
Can we stop the travel bans now?
The bottom line.
The travel ban against eight African countries will end in December of 2021. It was put into place in late November over omicron variant concerns, though I think it didn't accomplish much. Hopefully this is the end of poorly executed country-based travel bans on the part of the United States.
What do you think about the United States lifting its travel ban on Africa?
