Travellers!
Attentive to vaccination regulations to enter the United States 1:47
(CNN) -
The Biden administration on Monday outlined new details of its plans to allow foreign nationals vaccinated against COVID-19 to travel to the United States again starting Nov.8, including which vaccines will be allowed and who will be exempt. of the requirements.
The change will relax a patchwork of bans that had begun to rage abroad and replace them with more uniform requirements for incoming international air passengers.
It will be good news for the travel industry, which has been pushing the federal government to lift some of the rules that prevent international tourism, as well as airlines, hotels and hotel groups.
On Monday, the administration released three documents specifically related to upcoming air travel requirements, including a presidential proclamation setting out the requirements, orders from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). in English) on vaccines, testing and contact tracing, and technical instructions for implementation.
The new documents, a senior administration official told reporters, "will help airlines and travelers prepare for November 8 and ensure a smooth transition to the new system."
The Mexican border celebrates reopening with the US 3:13
The guidance for land border travel is also expected soon and will likely reflect the rules for air travel.
The administration defines "fully vaccinated" non-citizen, non-immigrant air travelers as those who have received vaccines approved by the US or approved by the World Health Organization (WHO).
According to the CDC, that includes "vaccines currently approved or licensed for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson [J&J] / Janssen COVID-19 vaccines)," as well as "vaccines that have been listed for emergency use by the World Health Organization (such as AstraZeneca / Oxford)."
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The administration is "well aware" that there are other COVID-19 vaccines that are not on the list, said a second administration official, and that the WHO is reviewing some of those other vaccines.
Those travelers will need to show proof of vaccination from an "official source," according to the White House fact sheet.
The United States will accept digital copies of vaccine certificates that align with US requirements, the second official said.
And those under 18 are exempt from the vaccination requirement, the second senior official said.
There are some other rare immunization exceptions, the White House fact sheet said. That includes "certain participants in the covid-19 vaccine clinical trial, those with medical contraindications to the vaccines, those who need to travel for humanitarian or emergency reasons (with a letter issued by the US government confirming the urgent need to travel), those who are traveling on non-tourist visas from countries with low vaccine availability (as determined by the CDC) and other very limited categories. "
WHO regularly updates that list of about 50 exempt countries with low vaccine availability, the second official noted, and it will require a "specific and compelling" reason to travel, according to the first official.
The list will be evaluated quarterly.
The medical exemption applies to those who have had "severe anaphylactic allergic reactions to a covid vaccine before," the second senior official said.
Those with exemptions will represent, the first senior official said, a "very, very small number of actual travelers to US cities."
The administration has also tightened its requirements for testing.
Unvaccinated US citizens, lawful permanent residents and travelers "must provide a negative test taken within one day of travel," according to a White House fact sheet.
Children under the age of two do not need to be tested, the second official said.
If a child from 2 to 18 years old is traveling with a vaccinated adult, they can take the test three days before departure.
The new guidelines, the White House said, will require all airlines flying to the United States to maintain the information to trace contacts and turn it over "quickly" to the CDC when necessary.
Travel bans to the US were first imposed in the early days of the pandemic when then-President Donald Trump limited travel from China in January 2020. That step failed to prevent the virus from reaching the United States. But additional countries were added to the list as health officials lobbied the White House to limit entry from places where case rates were high.
Trump added countries from the Schengen Zone, which encompasses 26 states in Europe, including France, Germany and Italy, along with Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Brazil, South Africa and India were added separately.
The land borders with Canada and Mexico were also closed.
President Joe Biden had maintained strict bans on nonessential travel even as vaccination rates in Europe rose, citing the unpredictable nature of the pandemic and the emergence of the delta variant.
But the system proved infuriating for European governments, whose nationals of countries were still barred from entering the United States, even as those nations reduced their case counts amid successful vaccination campaigns.
Countries with higher case totals that were not on the list were not subject to the rules.
Over the course of the past few months, travel restrictions for people wanting to enter the United States have become a major transatlantic rift.
European leaders, frustrated by the apparent lack of progress, began to make their complaints public.
They said the rules damaged relations between Europe and the United States.
The new rules, the White House said, will be implemented in stages.
The first phase will begin in early November and will allow fully vaccinated visitors traveling for non-essential reasons, such as visiting friends or for tourism, to cross the land borders of the United States.
The second phase will begin in early January 2022 and will apply the vaccination requirement to all incoming foreign travelers.
CNN's Kate Sullivan and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.
