What are the requirements to travel to the US?

More than a year and a half after Donald Trump imposed Covid-19 travel bans (first on China, then on Europe and the UK), the US is finally getting ready to relax its restrictions, according to Reuters.
The ban won’t be lifted immediately, as delta variant case counts continue to rise around the world, but there finally seems to be a path toward allowing foreign visitors from currently banned countries into the US—provided they are vaccinated.

According to Reuters’ source, the White House is working to reopen the US on a “phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals traveling to the United States (from all countries) need to be fully vaccinated.”
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The Covid-19 ban currently restricts entry to travelers who have spent the previous 14 days in China, Iran, the UK, Ireland, Brazil, or the European Schengen area. Citizens and green card holders traveling from those locations are still allowed in the country, as are individuals possessing a National Interest Exception, which includes students traveling to attend the school year in the US.

Tourists and holders of other US visas, including those who have long-term work permits, who pay taxes in the US, must also spend 14 days outside countries on the list before being allowed in the US.

In order to enter the US from the banned countries, foreigners need to stop in a third country—such as Mexico, or Canada—for two weeks prior to entry to the US. However, as the list of banned countries changes regularly, there is no guarantee that the chosen stop won’t itself be banned.

Since the countries on the list don’t actually reflect the ones where Covid-19 infections are higher, and include Europe, which has the highest vaccination rates after the US, pressure to end or relax the ban is strong. The aviation and tourism industry has been pushing to lift the ban for months, and so have leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
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The EU has been allowing travel from the US (with proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test) for over a month.

The logic behind the current ban is highly debatable, as it applies to countries with low transmission rates but leaves out places like Turkey, or many Latin American countries, where cases have been surging.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/who-can-travel-to-the-us/ar-AAN1aKp?ocid=uxbndlbing

OH NO: Trump Lied About Donating His Salary to Charity

David Pakman Show
1.36M subscribers
--It appears that Donald Trump did not actually donate his presidential salary, as promised, during his last six months as President of the United States

There is growing evidence that -- for whatever reason (higher viral loads, something different about how the virus is handled by less mature immune systems, or something else), children infected by the Delta variant may develop a more severe form of the disease compared to illness caused by other forms of the virus.

In a recent NPR interview, Dr. Rick Barr, who leads the Arkansas Children's Hospital, said that the "Delta variant is acting very, very differently with respect to kids ... just in the month of July, we have [admitted] over 40 to the children's hospital. .. and a number of those have ended up in the intensive care unit."

Half the kids were below 12 years of age and not eligible for vaccine but the other half -- also not fully vaccinated, were 12 years old and up.

And Arkansas is not the only Southern state reporting the increase of child hospitalizations.

All this suggests that the next real area for debate is not whether the current vaccines are good enough against the Delta variant (they are, overwhelmingly) or whether we should mask up and spread out (yes, obviously), but rather what should we do about the children who are not yet eligible for vaccination under a US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) but will be heading back to school in a month, or sooner -- during an outbreak of a viral variant that could get much more severe?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/02/opinions/worrisome-thing-about-delta-variant-sepkowitz/index.html