The White House Will Not Lift Travel Restrictions

Politics|The White House volition proceed to enforce question bans, citing Delta variant concerns.

• July 26, 2021, 5:19 p.m. ET

The Biden medication volition proceed to restrict introduction of Europeans and others into the United States, citing concerns that infected travelers whitethorn lend to further dispersed of the contagious Delta variant crossed the country, Jen Psaki, the White House property secretary, said Monday afternoon.

Concern astir the variant had convinced officials not to assistance the existent question restrictions connected foreigners, Ms. Psaki said, immoderate of which had been successful spot since the opening of the pandemic. Vaccines stay effectual against the worst outcomes of Covid-19, including from the Delta variant.

“The much transmissible Delta variant is spreading some present and astir the world,” she told reporters, adding that cases are rising successful the United States, particularly among the unvaccinated.

The determination is simply a stroke to the question industry, which hoped that a lifting of the question bans could summation tourism for the remaining summertime months, helping hotels, airlines and different businesses that person been struggling.

But Ms. Psaki said that it was unclear erstwhile the United States would region the bans completely.

“I don’t person a timeline to foretell for you due to the fact that it’s each astir what occurrence we person astatine getting much radical vaccinated, getting much vaccines retired to the satellite and warring the virus,” she said.

The United States began restricting question from foreigners successful January 2020, erstwhile erstwhile President Donald J. Trump restricted immoderate question from China successful the hopes of preventing the dispersed of the virus. That effort mostly failed.

But wellness officials pressed the Trump medication to grow question bans to overmuch of Europe during the archetypal surge of the pandemic successful the outpouring of 2020, and much countries person been added to the prohibition arsenic the archetypal microorganism and respective variants person dispersed rapidly from state to country.

The Trump medication besides utilized a nationalist wellness authorization known arsenic Title 42 to efficaciously unopen down the confederate borderline to entry, citing worries that immigrants crossing connected ft could bring the microorganism into the country. The Biden medication stopped enforcing the regularisation for unaccompanied children crossing the borderline unsocial and for immoderate families.

But Ms. Psaki said that the Title 42 restrictions, similar the different question bans, would stay for the clip being.