US to consider vaccine mandate for domestic air travel: Anthony Fauci

America’s top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on Monday that the US should consider a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel, indicating a possible embrace of an idea that the Biden administration had previously abandoned, as COVID-19 spreads. -19 cases were a spike.

Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief science adviser on the pandemic response, said such a mandate could increase the country’s vaccination rate as well as provide stronger protection on flights, for which federal regulations require two more years. Everyone older than that is required to wear a mask. covid 19 cases in america, anthony fauci, kovid 19 vaccine, omicron cases in america,

“When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci told MSNBC. “If you want to do this with domestic flights, I think it should be seriously considered.” The Biden administration has so far shied away from enforcing the vaccination requirement for domestic air travel. Two officials said Biden’s science advisers have yet to make a formal recommendation to the president for such a requirement.

Officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said a vaccine mandate on planes could trigger a number of logistical and legal concerns.

The US currently mandates that most foreign nationals traveling to the US be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, although citizens and permanent residents are only required to show proof of testing negative within one day of boarding.

Federal regulations do not require people traveling by air within the US to show a negative test. Hawaii requires travelers to be tested or show proof of vaccination to avoid mandatory quarantine.

Biden did not respond to questions about whether he was considering implementing the domestic air travel vaccination requirement, but he told reporters that the subject had been discussed on a call with the nation’s governors on Monday morning.

“He asked Dr. Fauci a few more questions about everything, whether he thought he was going to get tested at home or not? I mean, on air flights and things like that,” Biden told Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. I said of the call before departing the White House for his home.

Earlier this year the White House explored the need for home vaccinations for flights, or anyone requiring proof of vaccination or testing negative. But officials are not keen on making vaccination mandatory for domestic air travel because they expect it will face immediate legal challenges, undermining its potential effectiveness as a tool to drive vaccination.

Pressed last week as to why Biden did not mandate vaccination for domestic air travel, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told MSNBC that “we know that masking can be very effective on airplanes”. “We are also aware that imposing additional restrictions may delay flights, which may have additional implications? she added. “We would do this, however, if the health impact was enormous. So we always rely on the advice of our health and medical experts. This is not a step at this point that they determined we needed to take.”

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that more than 241 million Americans, about 77 percent of the eligible population age 5 and older, have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.

However, officials believe the figures are somewhat overblown due to record-keeping errors in the administration of booster shots.

Since the summer, the Biden administration has adopted various vaccination requirements to keep vaccination-deprived Americans up their sleeves. It established requirements that federal workers, federal contractors, and those who work in health care receive their shots, and that employers with 100 or more employees establish vaccination-or-test requirements for their workers. Huh. Those vaccination requirements have been mired in legal wrangling, with the Supreme Court set to hear arguments in the cases overturning them on January 7.