US to ease foreign traveler restrictions Nov 8

International travelers, including those fully vaccinated with China's Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, can resume air travel to the United States starting Nov 8 with proof of vaccination before boarding and a negative coronavirus test taken within three days.

The stipulation is part of the US guidance released Monday detailing how international air travelers can prepare for the lifting of a travel ban imposed in early 2020 on most non-US citizens from 33 countries, including China, the United Kingdom, the 26 Schengen countries in Europe, Ireland, India, South Africa, Iran and Brazil.

US President Joe Biden on Monday signed an order imposing new vaccine requirements for most foreign national air travelers and lifting strict travel restrictions on those countries effective in two weeks.

"For purposes of entry into the United States, vaccines will be accepted that include the FDA approved or authorized and WHO Emergency Use Listed vaccines," a senior Biden administration official told reporters Monday.

The vaccines approved for regular or emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization include Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and China's Sinopharm and Sinovac.

For unvaccinated air passengers, including unvaccinated US citizens and lawful permanent residents, the new policy will now require a test within one day before flying to the US, according to the official.

There will be "very limited" exceptions to the vaccination requirements for non-US citizens who are not immigrants, including for children under 18 and people with a "compelling reason" to travel from about 50 countries with nationwide vaccination rates of less than 10 percent due to a lack of vaccines, he said. Children under 2 years old do not need to test, he added.

International air passengers to the US also will be required to provide information such as US addresses, email and phone numbers to airlines before boarding flights, which will be retained for 30 days in case public health officials need "to follow up with travelers who have been exposed to COVID-19 variants or other pathogens", according to an order issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.

Tori Emerson Barnes, executive vice-president of the US Travel Association, said Monday's new policy "provides much-needed clarity for planning" and it looks forward to similar guidance in coming days for those qualified visitors who plan to travel across the US northern and southern land borders.

The association did not reply to a China Daily request for comment on the new policy's impact on US-China air traffic flows.

Travel has been the top US services export to China, which remains the third-largest source of overseas travel to the United States, and the 3 million Chinese visitations in 2018 accounted for 7.5 percent of overseas travel to the US, according to data posted on the association's website.

International passenger fares by Chinese flying on US airlines alone totaled $2.5 billion, or 7 percent of US travel exports to China in 2018, according to the US Department of Commerce.

But in 2019, business travel by Chinese fell by around 10 percent to $3.6 billion, and personal travel declined by a little over 8 percent to $9.4 billion, "possibly due to visa slowdowns and general wariness of traveling to the US amid bilateral tensions", noted the 2021 State Export Report released by the US-China Business Council.

The 2019 data do not include the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on the travel industry, and it is "highly likely" that the 2020 data will show that travel exports from US states declined even further that year, according to the report.

Perry Flint, head of corporate communications USA for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said the IATA welcomed the new US policy.

"We hope that this last category (of exemption) will include those who have been separated from families and loved ones for up to 18 months owing to travel restrictions," Flint told China Daily in an email.

The global airline industry is recovering gradually from COVID-19 but revenue passenger kilometers — RPKs, or the number of revenue passengers carried multiplied by the distance flown — are still estimated to be only 40 percent of pre-crisis levels in 2021, according to the IATA.

A return to profitability will be delayed another year, and with gradual recovery, 2022 will be another year of loss, according to the IATA Economics Airline Industry Financial Forecast October update.

After deep losses in 2020, US passenger airlines logged $4.3 billion in pretax losses in the first half of 2021, which would have been far worse without federal payroll support, according to Airlines for America, a trade group for US passenger and cargo airlines industry.

The US aviation industry already has seen the impact of the relaxation of air travel restrictions, which it anticipates will help revive a sector hobbled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have seen an increase in ticket sales for international travel over the past weeks, and are eager to begin safely reuniting the countless families, friends and colleagues who have not seen each other in nearly two years, if not longer," the Airlines for America said in a statement.

In September, US-international air travel fell 56 percent below 2019 levels, with air travel volume from China plunging by 98 percent, according to the trade group.

Last week, US domestic air travel volumes were 15 percent below the pre-pandemic levels, while international air travel shrank by 41 percent, the trade association said in its "Emerging From the Pandemic" report updated on Monday.