The Biden administration is lifting its requirement that international air travelers to the U.S. take a COVID-19 test within a day before boarding their flights, easing one of the last remaining government mandates meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
A senior administration official said the mandate expires Sunday at 12:01 a.m. EDT, saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that it’s no longer necessary. The official, speaking Friday on the condition of anonymity to preview the formal announcement, said that the agency would reevaluate the need for the testing requirement every 90 days and that it could be reinstated if a troubling new variant emerges.
The Biden administration put in place the testing requirement last year, as it moved away from restrictions that banned nonessential travel from several dozen countries — most of Europe, China, Brazil, South Africa, India and Iran — and instead focuses on classifying individuals by the risk they pose to others. It came in conjunction with a requirement that foreign, non-immigrant adults traveling to the United States need to be fully vaccinated, with only limited exceptions.
The initial mandate allowed those who were fully vaccinated to show proof of a negative test within three days of travel, while unvaccinated people had to present a test taken within one day of travel.
Airline and tourism groups have been pressing the administration for months to eliminate the testing requirement, saying it is discouraging people from booking international trips. Many other countries have lifted their testing requirements for fully vaccinated and boosted travelers in a bit to increase tourism.
“I’m glad CDC suspended the burdensome coronavirus testing requirement for international travelers, and I’ll continue to do all I can to support the strong recovery of our hospitality industry,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said in a statement.
The lifting of the requirement comes six weeks after a federal judge ended the CDC’s mask requirement for mass transit, including trains, planes, buses and transit hubs, saying the agency exceeded its authority. The Biden administration is appealing that ruling, saying it aims to protect the CDC’s ability to respond to future health emergencies.
The official said the CDC will continue to recommend COVID-19 testing prior to air travel of any kind as a safety precaution.
Parents anxious to finally vaccinate their youngest children against COVID-19, strap in: A lot is set to happen over the next week.
On Wednesday, both Moderna and Pfizer will have to convince what’s essentially a science court — advisers to the Food and Drug Administration — that their shots work well in babies, toddlers and preschoolers.
Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. If the agency’s advisers endorse one or both shots for them — and the FDA agrees — there’s still another hurdle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend whether all tots need immunization or just those at high risk from the virus.
Adding to the complexity, each company is offering different dose sizes and number of shots. And the week won’t even start with the littlest kid debate: Moderna first will ask FDA’s advisers to support its vaccine for older children.
Only a handful of countries, including China and Cuba, have offered different types of COVID-19 vaccinations to children younger than 5.
Here’s a primer to help keep all the developments straight.
PFIZER’S PLAN FOR THE LITTLEST
Pfizer has a pediatric track record — its COVID-19 vaccine is the only type the FDA allows for children of any age. Two doses plus a booster are cleared for everyone 5 and older. Shots for the 5- to 11-year-olds contain a third of the dose given to teens and adults.
For kids younger than 5, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech lowered the dose even more, to a tenth of the adult dose. The trade-off is a need for three shots, the first two given three weeks apart and the last at least two months later.
MODERNA’S PLAN FOR THE LITTLEST
Moderna is seeking FDA clearance for two shots, each a quarter of its adult dose, given about four weeks apart for kids younger than 6. (Moderna tested slightly different age groups than Pfizer.)
The FDA currently allows Moderna’s vaccine to be used only in adults. But some countries allow full-size doses for teens and half-size shots for kids ages 6 to 11.
MAKING THEIR CASE
Pfizer disappointed parents back in December when a study found two shots weren’t quite strong enough. So researchers tested a third shot in youngsters age 6 months through 4 years during the winter surge of the omicron variant.
Pfizer’s preliminary data showed after three shots, children developed high levels of virus-fighting antibodies with no safety problems. In addition, the vaccine appeared 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19. But that calculation was based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants by the end of April, and it could change if more cases have occurred since.
Moderna’s study found tots ages 6 months through 5 years developed high antibody levels after two of its shots. But while there were no severe cases of COVID-19 during the trial, the vaccine was only about 40% to 50% effective at preventing milder infections. Moderna has begun testing a booster for tots.
WHEN COULD SHOTS START?
If the FDA authorizes one or both shots — a decision expected shortly after its advisory panel’s meeting — all eyes move to the CDC. That agency recommends how to use vaccines. Which tots should get COVID-19 vaccination will be an important debate as the coronavirus doesn’t tend to make children as sick as adults yet nearly 500 deaths in U.S. children under 5 have been reported.
The CDC’s own vaccine advisers are scheduled to meet next Friday and Saturday, and a final decision by the CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, is expected shortly after they’re done.
If all those steps fall into place, vaccinations are expected to begin in most areas June 21.
VACCINATION SITES
Pediatricians, other primary care physicians and children’s hospitals are expected to vaccinate most of the youngest kids. Limited drugstores are expected to offer them for the littlest kids — parents should check local availability. The Biden administration says it also is working with a variety of other groups, such as children’s museums, to offer pop-up clinics and reach even more youngsters.
WHAT IF MY CHILD RECENTLY HAD COVID-19?
About three-quarters of children of all ages are estimated to have been infected at some point during the pandemic. It’s a question sure to come up as CDC’s advisers make recommendations for the littlest kids, so stay tuned.
For older ages, the CDC has recommended vaccination anyway to lower the chances of reinfection. There’s no firm guidance on how long to wait; the CDC has said people may wait three months after an infection.
DEMAND IS UNCLEAR
There are roughly 18 million children younger than 5, and many parents are eager to get their tots vaccinated. But it’s unclear how many ultimately will, given disappointing vaccine uptake by older children.
According to the CDC, just 29% of kids ages 5 to 11 have gotten two doses, and about 60% of 12- to 17-year-olds.
WHAT ABOUT MODERNA AND OLDER KIDS?
On Tuesday, the FDA’s advisers will consider whether to clear Moderna shots for older kids, those 6 to 17 — a decision that might alleviate some parent confusion.
The agency has held up the teen vaccine for months while it investigated a rare side effect, heart inflammation. That’s mostly a risk for teen boys and young men, and also can occur with the Pfizer vaccine.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
China on Friday attacked the theory that the coronavirus pandemic may have originated as a leak from a Chinese laboratory as a politically motivated lie, after the World Health Organization recommended in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is needed into whether a lab accident may be to blame.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also rejected accusations that China had not fully cooperated with investigators, saying it welcomed a science-based probe but rejected any political manipulation.
He also reiterated calls for an investigation into “highly suspicious laboratories such as Fort Detrick and the University of North Carolina” in the United States where China has suggested, without evidence, that the U.S. was developing the coronavirus as a bioweapon.
“The lab leak theory is totally a lie concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes, which has nothing to do with science,” Zhao said at a daily briefing.
“We always supported and participated in science-based global virus tracing, but we firmly opposed any forms of political manipulation,” he said.
Zhao said China has made major contributions toward virus tracing, sharing the most data and research results.
That “fully reflects China’s open, transparent and responsible attitude, as well as its support for the work of the WHO and the advisory group,” he said.
The WHO’s stance in a report released Thursday is a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins. It comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.
Following a tightly controlled visit to China last year, the WHO concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” the coronavirus might have spread to humans from a lab in the city of Wuhan. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped from bats to people, possibly via another animal.
However, in the Thursday report, WHO’s expert group said “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists said the group would “remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.”
Identifying a disease’s source in animals typically takes years. It took more than a decade for scientists to pinpoint the species of bats that were the natural reservoir for SARS, a relative of COVID-19.
WHO’s expert group also noted that since lab accidents in the past have triggered some outbreaks, the highly politicized theory could not be discounted.
The British government plans to burn billions of pounds (dollars) in unusable personal protective equipment purchased in haste during the coronavirus pandemic, a public spending watchdog said Friday.
The idea of burning the facemasks, gowns and other equipment to generate power has not impressed the watchdog committee. The panel is investigating how the government came to spend 4 billion pounds ($5 billion) on protective gear that has to be dumped because it is defective or does not meet U.K. standards.
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee said the government planned to dispose of 15,000 pallets a month of the gear “via a combination of recycling and burning to generate power.”
“The costs and environmental impact of disposing of the excess and unusable PPE is unclear,” the committee noted.
Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, a professional body, accused the government of “sending billions of pounds up in smoke.”
In a report, the accounts committee found that the Department of Health lost 75% of the 12 billion pounds it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and faulty products.
Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Meg Hillier, who chairs the committee, said the PPE saga was “perhaps the most shameful episode in the U.K. government response to the pandemic.”
“The government splurged huge amounts of money, paying obscenely inflated prices and payments to middlemen in a chaotic rush, during which they chucked out even the most cursory due diligence,” she said.
Government minister Robin Walker acknowledged Friday that “mistakes were made” early in the pandemic. But he said it was “a totally unprecedented situation” in which countries around the world were scrambling to acquire supplies during a health crisis.
Total Doses Distributed = 754,073,055. Total Doses Administered = 590,076,511. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 258,853,549. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 221,601,089.
An expert group drafted by the World Health Organization to help investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic says further research is needed to determine how COVID-19 first began, including a more detailed analysis of the possibility it was a laboratory accident.
That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, when it concluded last year that it was “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 might have spilled into humans from a lab.
In a report released Thursday, WHO’s expert group said “key pieces of data” are still missing to explain how the pandemic began. The scientists said the group would “remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.”
It noted that since lab accidents in the past have triggered some outbreaks, the highly politicized theory could not be discounted.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speculated repeatedly — without evidence — that COVID-19 was started in a Chinese lab. He also accused WHO of “colluding” with China to cover up the initial outbreak, citing the U.N. health agency’s continued public praise of the country.
WHO’s expert group said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sent two letters to senior Chinese government officials in February requesting information including details about the earliest human cases of COVID-19 in the city of Wuhan. The experts said no studies were provided to WHO that assessed the possibility of COVID-19 being a laboratory leak. They said their understanding of how the coronavirus emerged was limited by factors including that not all research presented by Chinese scientists on the virus has been published.
The scientists said numerous avenues of research were needed, including studies evaluating the role of wild animals, which are thought to be COVID-19’s natural reservoir, and environmental studies in places where the virus might have first spread, like the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan.
Last March, WHO released a report about COVID-19’s origins following a highly choreographed visit by international scientists to China, which concluded that the disease most likely jumped into humans from bats and that there was no evidence to suggest there was a connection to a laboratory.
Yet after considerable criticism, including from some of the scientists on WHO’s team, Tedros acknowledged that it was “ premature ” to rule out a lab leak and said he has asked China to be more transparent in sharing information.
In its new report, WHO said they were given access to data including from unpublished blood samples from more than 40,000 people in Wuhan in 2019, which were tested for COVID-19 antibodies. None were found, suggesting the virus was not spreading widely before it was first identified in late December that year.
WHO’s experts called for numerous studies to be done, including testing wild animals to find which species might host COVID-19. They also said the “cold chain” supply theory should be probed — a scientifically questionable theory that China has advanced, arguing that traces of COVID-19 on frozen packaging was causing outbreaks rather than any domestic source.
To investigate whether COVID-19 might have been the result of a lab accident, WHO’s experts said research should be conducted “with the staff in the laboratories tasked with managing and implementing biosafety and biosecurity,” saying that would provide more information about how viruses related to COVID-19 were managed.
China has previously called the suggestion that COVID-19 began in a laboratory “ baseless ” and countered that the virus might have originated in American facilities, which were also known to be researching coronaviruses in animals. The Chinese government has said it supports the search for the pandemic’s origins, but that other countries should be the focus.
Last August, scientists connected to WHO lamented that the search for the pandemic’s origins had stalled and that the window of opportunity was “closing fast.” They warned that collecting data that was now at least two years old was increasingly difficult.
Numerous public health expert s have called for a global commission to investigate COVID-19’s origins, saying that WHO lacks both the political authority and the independence to determine how the pandemic started.
