US Finally Scraps COVID Test Requirement for Inbound International Flights
Flying to the US from other countries will no longer require sticking a swab up your nose. The Centers for Disease Control rule(Opens in a new window) demanding a negative COVID-19 test for inbound international flights finally expires Sunday.
Reuters(Opens in a new window), the Washington Post(Opens in a new window), USA Today(Opens in a new window) and other news sites broke the news Friday morning, citing unnamed Biden administration sources. Per those reports, foreigners will still need to submit proof of vaccination before flying to America after the rule ends at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday.
This regulation began(Opens in a new window) in the dying days of the Trump administration as the pandemic was pushing American deaths towards 500,000; then, it required a test within three days of a US-bound flight. In January 2022, the Biden administration tightened(Opens in a new window) the rule as the Omicron wave of the pandemic crested, shortening the test timeframe to the calendar day before an inbound international flight.
This stricter variant of the CDC rule did not slow the pandemic to any discernible degree but did regularly strand Americans overseas—although some routed around that problem by flying to Canada or Mexico(Opens in a new window) before driving across the border. Entire professional sports teams elected(Opens in a new window) to return to the US from Canada by bus to avoid this risk.
The rule looked even less logical after a federal judge in Florida vacated(Opens in a new window) the administration’s mask mandate for travel on April 18, a week before it was due to expire, and the White House then slow-walked its challenge of that ruling. That left the government essentially telling people that flying with
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