President Joe Biden is facing mounting pressure to lift blanket COVID-19 travel bans and quickly reopen the US borders to international tourists given vaccination rates are increasing and Americans can now travel freely to Europe.
Travel industry and public health experts are among those urging the Biden administration to restart international travel because bans like the ones currently in place are ‘no longer appropriate’ and are decimating the economy.
The US border remains closed to 26 European countries, the UK, Iran, China, South Africa, Brazil and India because of COVID-19 concerns.
Some of the border bans – such as the ones imposed on the EU, UK and China – have not been updated since they were put in place back in March 2020 when the pandemic first took hold.
Since then, COVID-19 vaccinations have accelerated and deaths and hospitalizations from the virus have drastically declined. While the Indian delta variant is now spreading rapidly and accounts for 26 percent of cases in…