US To Reimpose COVID-19 Travel Ban

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President Joe Biden will re-impose a COVID-19 travel ban on most non-US citizens who have been in Britain, Brazil, Ireland and much of Europe, the White House has said, as the new administration ramps up its pandemic response.

AFP reports that Biden will also on Monday extend the ban to travelers who have recently been to South Africa amid warnings that new, more transmissible coronavirus variants are already establishing themselves in the United States, the official said, confirming US media reports.

The president last week tightened mask wearing rules and ordered quarantine for people flying into the United States, as he seeks to tackle the country’s worsening coronavirus crisis.

Biden has said that the COVID-19 death toll would likely rise from 420,000 to half a million next month – and that drastic action was needed.

Read also: COVID-19 Deaths Surpasses Two Million Globally

“We’re in a national emergency. It’s time we treated it like one,” he said on Thursday.

In his last days in office, Donald Trump announced that a COVID-19 ban on travelers arriving from much of Europe and Brazil would be lifted — but the Biden administration immediately said it would reverse the order due to come into effect on January 26.

Trump had announced an initial ban on January 31, 2020 on non-American travelers entering from China to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The ban was extended to European countries on March 14 as the pandemic entered full force.

More than 25 million COVID-19 cases have been recorded in the US since the pandemic began, according to the Johns Hopkins University tallyUS To Reimpose COVID-19 Travel Ban on Sunday.

The milestone was reached only five days after the US, the world’s wealthiest and hardest-hit nation, recorded 400,000 deaths from the disease.