In a huge blow to the testing industry, a negative Covid-19 test will no longer be required to fly to the U.S. for departures starting Sunday at midnight. The rule made little sense, and contributed little, but created hassle and uncertainty for travelers.
- Flying to the U.S. today or Saturday? You still have to have a negative test. This makes no sense.
- There are virtually zero Covid-19 mitigation measures in the U.S. except this one This made no sense.
- The testing requirement didn’t serve to keep variants out of the U.S. They didn’t keep people with Covid-19 out of the country (an antigen test the day before travel was enough) and variants co-evolve in the U.S> as well.
- It wasn’t ever required for land crossings, so people could fly to Mexico or Canada and then drive across the border without a test.
- We now have vaccines and treatments and hospital capacity isn’t stretched as it has been at some points during the pandemic.
Even Australia lifted its testing requirement, but the U.S. held onto it and little else. But somehow the CDC “determined that the science and data mean the tests are no longer necessary” which implies that until now they believed “the science and data” meant the measure was necessary but never explained why or how. Or why and how no testing requirement was supported by the science for land crossings.
Thank you to everyone who contacted the White House to lobby them to stop this policy that was no longer supported by science. YAY!
Another pillar of the long-running scam finally ends. A failed policy to join the likes of the face diapers, anti-social distancing, lockdowns, and the experimental gene therapies.
How about a Federal government reimbursement to those travelers who had to shell out $25 – $100 per test multiple times, as they made a number of trips back to the US in the past two years. I had to spend time and $$ at least 10 times to satisfy this non-science requirement.
The Feds have given $$$ away for lots of other Covid related issues, why not this one too?
Oh….did the airline crews have to get tested every time they flew back to the US? I have never been able to get an answer to this.
Have a flight from BOG to DFW/YYZ on Monday night so relieved not to have to track down and pay for another test even though I’m fully vaccinated with 4 shots or two different types of vaccine. Will make several other trips to/through the US over the summer so @$40/test will save quite a bit.
Get your travel in now before Pretender Brandon’s caretakers reinstate mandates to try to boost his polling numbers!
@ James N – if you succumbed to COVID and passed (like millions of others) there would not be you to spew this nonsense. Here you go.
Why do ( the press ) always spin a negative on good news ??? This is the problem with the media and the press, thus is a huge blow to the testing industry! ? Why spin it that way ? Jesus just stare and report the facts !! That’s it !!!
The science and the data, good grief.
Flying on Sunday, delta rep still ask to test just in case. It doesn’t make sense.
I wonder how many video proctoring places go dark this weekend?
Also without the demand of US bound travelers how long can other countries pre-departure testing requirements survive?
Such nonsense. How would reinstating the hated testing boost the president’s poll numbers???!!! See how ridiculous you sound. In fact, with that non sequitur you inadvertently enunciated the true reason for why the administration has decided to stop the testing at this time: the decision is based on science and not politics. The CDC will reevaluate the situation in 90 days, and if there are worrisome signs, the ‘insanity’ — that is how unpopular it is — may be reinstated based on what scientific data suggest, and not to boost the prez’s poll numbers because the opposite is, in fact, likely to happen if testing returns…
Well, well. Well…another reason you can’t and shouldn’t believe what the CDC says or does!!!
Another example of the “dumbing ” down of America!!!
The testing requirement helped make it possible for people to try to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection during the course of a trip with long-haul international travel even into this month. And to/from the long-haul international gateway airport, the concerned could drive to avoid masses of untested crowds in a way that wouldn’t be possible on long-haul international flights if not for the sensible testing requirement.
“Breathe Free” should check the blood oxygen levels because that “brain” isn’t thinking straight and seems to be indicating more and more behavioral signs of hypoxic brain damage since the start of his/her/its Lord Trump-worshiping.
I am curious as to how this affects the trip delay portion of some travel insurance. If you contract COVID but are not seriously ill, will they still cover the expense of additional food and lodging until you are negative of the CDC’s recommended 10 day waiting period has passed? I recognize that passengers in this position will be able to return home as scheduled, but if they don’t want to infect others, will travel insurance cover the delay?
Oops, “of” should read “or.”
“The rule made little sense, and contributed little, but created hassle and uncertainty …”. The epitome of inept government activities. The feds are GOOD at this stuff.
Abundant home testing was available in other countries long before the US required a test to enter the US, let alone before abundant home tests became available in the US.
The only people that were testing in many countries were Americans returning home.
and given that the CDC recommended masks for monkeypox only to have to retract that item, the CDC is so far shot that we can all hope that nothing serious happens in 2 generations because no one will believe them again. Might as well dissolve the agency and start over.
oh, and as soon as the Dems are swept out of office, the crimes of Fauci needs to be featured in one of the first prime time public hearings.
@GUWonder the broad based public health benefits were nil. Testing isn’t required for spending an evening in a poorly ventilated bar. It was required for Caribbean – Miami flights but not Dallas-Anchorage. And the greateat exposure was in the airport rather than on board regardless of stage length. In amy case we have – and have had – preventive measures and treatments. This requirement did nothing to prevent variants, protect hospital capacity or change the course of the pandemic in any way.
Tried to paste the score from the Hallelujah Chorus here but that didn’t work. Since we’ve reached the point where entire Canadian sports teams are taking buses across the border to avoid dealing with this requirement, it is evident that we’ve reached the point of absurdity. There was never any data published which showed its effect on transmissions. On my last flight from the Caribbean I had to mention to the ticket agent that I even had a test result before he looked; perhaps he was used to the phony ones allegedly being printed at resorts. Good bye and good riddance.
So relieved. Going to Portugal in July and relieved my ability to work won’t be compromised by getting stuck abroad. And my company can FINALLY send people out of country again to work with overseas teams without having to create contingency plans for what happens if people get “stuck.” I wish Portugal would drop its testing requirement for U.S. travelers, but at least we can quarantine here at home before our trip to get that negative test.
Pre-flight testing is a silly requirement, given that it does next to nothing to prevent variants from getting into the U.S. It was a false sense of security at best. I tested negative for COVID for 3 days when I had symptoms, and I could have gotten on a plane.
I support countries requiring proof of vaccination from non-residents (to avoid having to hospitalize people who don’t pay taxes there). But pre-travel testing did nothing to stop COVID/new variants from crossing oceans. And, if anything, caused more spread because it’s not like testing positive at the airport got you whisked away to quarantine — you had to arrange for a new hotel, take the train to said hotel, spreading your COVID all the while.
Thank you Lord’s Brandon and Fauci, from whom all our blessings flow. Thank you for allowing us to have our freedoms back.
@GUWonder said “…drive to avoid masses of untested crowds in a way that wouldn’t be possible on long-haul international flights if not for the sensible testing requirement.”
And then get onto a domestic leg, and get exposed to hundreds of – OMG! – untested crowds who don’t give a rat’s a$$ about “sensible testing requirements”.
Better check the blood oxygen levels because that “brain” of yours isn’t thinking straight either.
And @GUWonder the notion that this somehow created safe air travel when testing was required in only one direction…
@Jose, he is being sarcastic. If you follow Gary at all, you know his opinions on this topic. This is really good news for travelers and for common sense.
Returning on Tuesday. The testing fees might buy a nice bottle in duty free.
I purchased few extra tests. Emed would not accept return 🙁 They’re now useless. I know I shouldn’t buy many in advance 🙂 Happy Travelling!
Fixed.
So says our resident M.D., who just writes a travel for kicks, but is the world’s foremost expert in infectious diseases.
A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste…
Public health benefits are public health benefits, whether “broad based” or not.
A round trip with one leg requiring testing and the other not requiring testing still meant less chance for exposure to the virus from fellow passengers than if neither flight leg required testing.
Personally, I was expecting this test requirement to be phased out before my late April and May flights this spring. That it sticks around until almost mid-June isn’t a problem for me. That it goes away isn’t a problem for me either.
I still take more issue with no longer being able to fly from the US to Canada and Mexico with just my US state driving license and US state birth certificate than I ever took with this Covid-19 test requirement.
Gennady,
Driving is a substitute to taking domestic flight legs in a way that driving can’t be to get across the oceans. But if you can see Russian from Sarah Palin’s backyard and find a land bridge across the Pacific and across the Atlantic, do let us know.
Russia*
GU
if you wish to mask and test, go for it.
Most of the rest of the world is not so figure out how you deal w/ that reality.
You are free to “go illegal” to cross US borders and then you don’t even have to use your DL.
Tim Dunn,
Unlike you here, I don’t support violating laws and other legal norms.
My comments about the testing requirement here have nothing to do with whether or not I personally wish to “mask and test” myself.
Has this become the “GUWonder” website? What a total waste of my time reading through all this rubbish!
@ James N
“Another pillar of the long-running scam finally ends. A failed policy to join the likes of the face diapers, anti-social distancing, lockdowns, and the experimental gene therapies.’
It’s no wonder that the USA lost over one million people, if that sort of ignorance and selfish attitude is in anyway representative of the community!
Do you go to the doctor when you’re sick – get antibiotics if you have a bad infection like pneumonia? If the answer is yes, you are an utter hypocrite.
Other countries were more civilised and their strategies now proven. Yet some continue to live in denial.
@ Breathe Free
“Get your travel in now before Pretender Brandon’s caretakers reinstate mandates to try to boost his polling numbers!”
Your statement makes no logical sense. Just how would reinstating testing for international arrivals positively affect polling numbers? Followers of the t*RUMP, were and always will be bereft of intelligence and so easily manipulated into dumb positions.
@ Mary Beth Williams
“Well, well. Well…another reason you can’t and shouldn’t believe what the CDC says or does!!!
Another example of the “dumbing” down of America!!!”
Yeah – there are undoubtedly some dumb folk in the USA and some of them exhibit their stupidity on this very blog.
Other countries have already removed testing for international arrivals (Australia some months ago), but consider that vaccination is also in play.
If you want to remove testing then you would ideally need ALL arrivals to be vaccinated, not just non-citizens and non-residents, savvy?
Also consider the poor vaccination rates within country (67% in US compared with 84% in Australia).
If you prefer to derive your medical knowledge from an unqualified travel blogger (in this case the hopelessly scientifically and medically misinformed @ Gary Leff) then go for it – you’ve just proven your own point about the “dumbing down of America”.
@ huey judy
““The rule made little sense, and contributed little, but created hassle and uncertainty …”. The epitome of inept government activities. The feds are GOOD at this stuff.”
You are making your judgment on what – an article about COVID from @ Gary who has repeatedly shown his ignorance on matters COVID over many articles?
Stuff that does not make sense to @ Gary can be eminently sensible to someone who is (1) highly trained (2) highly experienced (3) has the data at their fingertips (4) has the mathematical models on their computer which can be used to predict various outcomes of balancing various disease control measures.
Unless you have all four of the above attributes, your position is likely misinformed and lead you to the insane presumption that the folk who are trying to keep you and your community safe are up to some underhand nasty stuff – you just become another sad conspiracy theorist.
Undermining the work of the medical and science communities is a reckless pursuit.
@ Tim Dunn
“The only people that were testing in many countries were Americans returning home.”
Strangely, most likely not the case. Unless, of course you have some penetrating data to support your position?
“and given that the CDC recommended masks for monkeypox only to have to retract that item, the CDC is so far shot that we can all hope that nothing serious happens in 2 generations because no one will believe them again”
So, a change in recommended practice is sufficient to damn a whole organisation and all of its people? That is a wild logical leap, Tim. Would you stop flying an airline altogether, if it were revealed to you that there had been a change in a basic safety process made because of a need to clarify that process or update it due to incoming data or output from a mathematical model?
“oh, and as soon as the Dems are swept out of office, the crimes of Fauci needs to be featured in one of the first prime time public hearings.”
Perhaps you should consider the damage done by the ditched president who spent so much effort undermining the medics and scientists who were trying to manage a pandemic, despite being shamefully publicly trashed by politicians with zero medical or scientific knowledge and for their own personal political gain. Nasty stuff, with ugly consequences when otherwise intelligent people become entranced by their facile narrative and try to blame the utter failing of the US to handle the health crisis caused by their void of political leadership.
@ Gary Leff
Or should I call you, Doctor, based upon your presumptive hubris?
“the broad based public health benefits were nil.”
If you want to pretend to be at the level of the scientifically smart and medically competent, you might like to begin by using exact language and refer to supporting datasets.
– “broad based” means what in your brain? An analysis focusing on a population level rather than an individual level? Or are you implying downstream benefits? Or are you thinking of co-operative effects between control measures?
– “benefits were “nil”” – in your opinion? Or do you have any data to back up that statement? What benefits have you been able to discount?
“Testing isn’t required for spending an evening in a poorly ventilated bar. It was required for Caribbean – Miami flights but not Dallas-Anchorage. And the greateat exposure was in the airport rather than on board regardless of stage length.”
Well, doctor, we know what has worked in controlling the pandemic, because some countries did just that, despite the howls of ridicule from some dumb Americans on travel bogs, who were more obsessed with their personal freedoms than concerned about the wellbeing of their one million dead compatriots.
You ended up with a compromised control program and now you want to pick holes in the outcome and find somebody to blame?
Of course, your program is inconsistent. But let’s add some context, shall we?
Per above, think about the role of vaccinations. Australia opened its borders and dropped testing thanks to very high vaccination rates. It still requires ALL arrivals to be vaccinated.
But too many freedom-obsessed Americans don’t get vaccinated and insist on their freedoms thereof, so it’d be a testy business to deny them entry to their own country. So, less heavy lifting from vaccination and more fall back on whatever measures are left that can be instituted without the population of cry-babies having a tantrum because of masks, social distancing, lock downs or whatever.
Basically, you can impose certain, measures on non-citizens / non-residents that, apparently, would cause seismic social ripples, if you attempt to apply such to the American softies that can’t hack a needle.
Also, governments have recruited airlines to police international arrivals requirements. That can pass muster on a SYD-LAX, but not a DFW-ANC flight, no?
“In any case we have – and have had – preventive measures and treatments. This requirement did nothing to prevent variants, protect hospital capacity or change the course of the pandemic in any way.”.
You could be right. Or you could be wrong. Just declaring such a statement doesn’t make it true. Where’s your data? If you want to be Gary Leff M.D., you might start thinking about what data you’d like to back your medical opinion. For starters, how many folk have tested positive within 24 hours of their flight? How many of them were vaccinated? What do the mathematical models of control measures used in an integrated strategy predict about the role of testing in the mix of control measures? Do real life data uphold the modelled outcomes? Is the CDC failing to adopt some sort of process, modelling, integrated control strategy? Etc, etc…
“And @GUWonder the notion that this somehow created safe air travel when testing was required in only one direction…”
One fundamental failure in logic is to look at testing requirements in isolation. Clue – reductionist presumptions don’t always apply when you are dealing with a system.
@ drrichard:
“There was never any data published which showed its effect on transmissions”
It may well be the time to drop the testing requirement.
That said, there is most certainly a body of published work on managing transmission of COVID with respect to travel, which includes testing in the mix, readily accessible online with a few seconds worth of search effort by anybody who can be bothered to do such before making grandiose and unsubstantiated statements. You could mount arguments about its applicability and the net value of such, but it would be unfortunate to deny the existence of the research itself.
And does the CDC have unpublished data on which to make a call?
@ sofar
“Pre-flight testing is a silly requirement, given that it does next to nothing to prevent variants from getting into the U.S. It was a false sense of security at best.”
So, kinda like so many of those safety rules we follow when we fly or fly on an aircraft?
“But pre-travel testing did nothing to stop COVID/new variants from crossing oceans. And, if anything, caused more spread because it’s not like testing positive at the airport got you whisked away to quarantine — you had to arrange for a new hotel, take the train to said hotel, spreading your COVID all the while.”
Better let the science and medical boffins know that you have got it all worked out better than they ever did.
@ Gennady
“Better check the blood oxygen levels because that “brain” of yours isn’t thinking straight either.”
Actually, that would be a symptom of COVID, which is why it’s best controlled rather than let run rampant…;)
Thankfully, you started your post with a response to my comment. Once you invoked the laughable million dead figure, you revealed your ignorance and made it easy to ignore the rest of your nonsense.
@platy THANK YOU for calling out every single one of the bloviators, conspiracy theorists, and the widely misinformed. You did a mitzvah!
I was, quite literally, online looking up my cheapest home kit proctoring option for a trip in two weeks–as a solo traveler it is more maddening because those options are more costly or less reliable–when I clicked away and saw the news. I am now going on a month-long trip where there are zero government mandates in any of the countries I am visiting or for me to return. While that can change at anytime, of course, and I am going prepared, I am not sure I thought I would see this day. When I booked my trip, the countries had restrictions, masks, testing, et. al.
As to the other points: One reason it was a scam is that there were known places–from Mexico to Ireland–where you were either guaranteed a negative test or directed to a doctor where you could buy a fit to fly certificate. I know this from the many news reports, not personal experience. My personal experience is adding money to my own budget, despite being vaxxed, boosted, AND having Covid. It really gets old. Viruses do happen. Those of us with common sense will use our many free Covid tests and self test. I cannot fathom flying while being sick anyway. But people are flying with Covid all over the U.S. This is not rocket science. A border doesn’t change anything but a testing company’s net profits.
While we’re at it, let’s stop with removing shoes and banning water. Nobody has the nerve to stop those insanities.
@ James N
“…face diapers, anti-social distancing, lockdowns, and the experimental gene therapies…”
No, mate, you weren’t supposed to put the diaper on your face but on your behind, you weren’t supposed use the bleach as a mouthwash but to disinfect the toilet bowl, and you don’t keep taking the little blue pills, if you want to wake up into the real world…no wonder America had problems controlling COVID…it was the diaper shortage that let the virus spread.
Brandon, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be.
Very happy that the testing requirement is going away, but I do wish theater there was still a mask requirement on both domestic and international flights. Pre-flight testing was. It effective, but masking works. I am a PhD who researches RNA viruses, btw.
@platy, your post is long, but spot on. Brilliant. As for the travel blogger pretending to understand science, what a joke. I’ll read the suggestions for point bonuses and credit cards, but spare us the faux medical insight. Actually, on second thought, there are plenty of sites for points and credit cards. No need to wade through this idiotic blog any longer.
GUWonder – I have no idea why you’d bring Palin or bridge to Russia into this conversation, must be some kind of your own personal obsession.
My point, however, – which you never addressed – is total lack of logic in requiring the test while going across the water, but not over the land. So, correct me if I’m wrong – when and if you will travel from Europe to, say, California – I presume you’d be flying to NYC, for example, then drive to LAX or SFO? Is that your solution?
@platy – wow! Your post…talk about conversation-killer.
Next time, just publish a book 🙂
@Tom “I do wish theater there was still a mask requirement on both domestic and international flights”
Freudian slip? LOL
To all of those complaining-
In the bigger scheme of things, who cares? Sorry your feelings were hurt by Mask Mandates. At least your still alive.
@Rav – you don’t get out much, do you? Tell us how many trips abroad you took in the last 2 yrs. Then you can make your snide comments…