From Segun Amure, (The New Diplomat’s Abuja Bureau)
The United States President-elect, Joe- Biden on Monday reiterated his administration plan to extend travel restrictions on travellers who have recently been in much of Europe and Brazil, a departure from an earlier directive given by outgoing U.S President Donald Trump.
President Trump had issued a proclamation Monday, announcing he will rescind travel bans for non-U.S. citizens from Brazil, the United Kingdom and much of Europe next week.
The order reads, “Public health officials in the jurisdictions have a proven record of working with the United States to share accurate and timely COVID-19 testing and trend data, and the United States has active collaborations with the jurisdictions regarding how to make travel safe between our respective countries, UK, Ireland, the Schengen area of Europe that allows travel across open borders, and Brazil from 26 January. Travel bans for China and Iran would remain in place”.
It would be recalled that the travel bans were put in place at the start of the pandemic following calls from health officials who urged the president to nip the spread of the virus to the bud. The United Kingdom and Europe were banned in March, while that of Brazil was May, 2020.
However, responding to the matter, Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki, emphasised that Biden’s administration had no plan to lift travel bans, “on the advice of our medical team, the Administration does not intend to lift these restrictions on 1/26.”
In addition, Psaki further affirmed that “in fact, we plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel in order to further mitigate the spread of COVID-19.”
“With the pandemic worsening, and more contagious variants emerging around the world, this is not the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel.” she said.
The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in its data report had said that more than 95 million people worldwide have tested positive to Covid-19 and it killed over 2 million of them.
The United States has so far recorded 24, 626,441 cases since the pandemic struck with 14,551 686 recoveries and its death toll has risen to 406,623.
