WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will announce the reimposition of a Covid-19 travel ban on most non-citizens who have been in Britain, Brazil, Ireland and much of Europe, said a White House official yesterday, as the new administration ramps up its pandemic response.
Biden will also today extend the ban to travellers who were recently in South Africa, amid warnings that new, more transmissible coronavirus variants are already establishing themselves in the United States, said the official, confirming US media reports.
The president last week tightened mask-wearing rules and ordered quarantine for people flying into the US, as he seeks to tackle the country’s worsening coronavirus crisis.
Biden has said the Covid-19 death toll will likely rise from 420,000 to half a million next month – and that drastic action is needed.
“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 travellers arriving from much of Europe and Brazil would be lifted – but the Biden administration said it will immediately reverse the order due to come into effect tomorrow.
Trump announced an initial ban on January 31 last year on non-American travellers entering from China to stop the spread of the virus.
The ban was extended to European nations on March 14 as the pandemic entered full force. – AFP, January 25, 2021
