United States Stops COVID-19 testing For international air travel
More great news for travelers. The CDC announced effective June 12, 2022, that they are suspending Covid-19 testing for international travelers re-entering the United States via air travel. Airlines have been fighting the Department of Justice, The Center for Disease Control, and the Biden administration to have Covid-19 testing stopped. As most travelers are aware the airline industry has suffered significantly during Covid-19 from lockdowns. After lockdowns were lifted people returning to travel have been hampered by the cost of expensive testing while abroad. While the Center for Disease Control insists that this situation is going to be a 90-day reprieve and will be reevaluated it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to re-establish this mandate. Airlines have struggled for two years with restrictions concerning both mandatory face masks, vaccine mandates, and Covid-19 testing requirements. However, the United States southern border is flooded on a daily basis with tens of thousands of illegal migrants that none of these policies and procedures have been applied. Many major airlines based in the United States have pending litigation against the current presidential administration to lift the restrictions imposed by the CDC on public transportation.
The mandate for Covid-19 testing for international travelers added significant unexpected expenses sometimes as high as $500 per traveler for testing to comply with the 24-hour timeframe that the United States imposed. Unlike in the United States where the Covid-19 test is free to most people, other counties are unable to bear the cost of testing. Unfortunately, most international travelers are unable to obtain reliable Covid-19 testing costs before booking travel. For a family of four, this financial burden sometimes costs more than the deeply discounted hotel and airline tickets deals offered to restart the travel industry.
Aside from the cost of testing is also the issue of the inconsistency of the quality and accuracy of testing that is being conducted abroad. There are numerous nightmare accounts of a single-family member testing positive one day and negative the next day and then being required to adjust travel plans at the last minute incurring the more unexpected cost.
Lifting the Covid-19 testing mandate is long overdue. This is just another step back to the normalcy in the freedoms that we as Americans are entitled to happy travels