America’s federal health officials have on Friday.said that people who are fully vaccinated of COVID-18 must continue to wear mask in public, avoid crowds, maintain social distance and wash their hands frequently to avoid being contaminated.
They added that Americans who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can travel “at low risk to themselves,” both within the United States and internationally.
According to the health practitioners as reported by The New York Times, the vaccinated Americans do not need to get a coronavirus test before arriving in another country unless required to do so by authorities at the destination.
The America Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added that the fully vaccinated Americans do not need to quarantine after returning to the United States unless required to do so by local jurisdictions.
The recommendation further states that vaccinated travellers should have a negative result from a coronavirus test before boarding a flight back to the United States, and they should get tested again three to five days after their return home.
The recommendation is predicated on the idea that vaccinated people may still be infected with the virus.
The question begging for answer is: What then is the essence of the COVID-19 vaccination if a fully vaccinated individual cannot be protected from being infected by the coronavirus?
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In the cases of polio and meningitis vaccinations, recepients do not need to be afraid of contracting the virus anymore because the vaccine should serve as insullator.
People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or two weeks after receiving the second dose of the two-dose regimen from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna.
The recommendations issued Friday do not alter the C.D.C. travel guidelines for the unvaccinated. The agency continues to discourage non-essential domestic travel by those who are not fully immunized, saying that if they must travel, they should be tested for coronavirus infection one to three days before their trip and again three to five days after concluding their trip. Unvaccinated travellers should self-quarantine for seven to 10 days if they don’t get tested after a trip, the agency said.
The C.D.C.’s guidance does not change the fact that many countries, including those in the European Union, still block most Americans from coming. Some are starting to make exceptions for those who are vaccinated. As of March 26, fully vaccinated Americans who can present proof of vaccination can visit Iceland, for example, and avoid border measures such as testing and quarantining, the country’s government said.
Some destinations and cruise lines already have started requiring that travellers be fully vaccinated. The cruise line Royal Caribbean is requiring passengers and crew members 18 or older to be vaccinated in order to board its ships, as are Virgin Voyages, Crystal Cruises and others.
For the moment, airlines are not requiring vaccinations for travel. But the idea has been much talked about in the industry.
On Thursday, the Transportation Security Administration reported more than 1.5 million travelers going through security checkpoints at airports, with the number of travelers increasing since early-to-mid March. While that is a significant increase compared with the 124,000 people screened a year ago, it is still 35 percent less than it was in 2019. On Sunday, the agency screened nearly 1.6 million people at airports.
On Sunday, nearly 1.6 million passengers boarded domestic flights, the most on any day since the pandemic began.
The New York Times
