COVID vaccinations are not a guarantee for travel around the world
By Brian Miller
As COVID-19 continues to hold most of the world hostage, vaccinations are still not a pathway to travel around the globe.
In Europe, travel restrictions to and from the countries have relaxed over the last several months but for some countries, like those in South America and parts of southern North America, vaccinations are not being recognized.
As reported on TheGuardian.com, England especially is taking a stricter policy from some nations and citizens are calling the decisions, racist.
"Under the new rules, travellers fully vaccinated with Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen shots in the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea or an EU country will be considered “fully vaccinated” and exempt from quarantine when they arrive in England from an amber list country.But people who have been fully vaccinated with the same vaccines in Africa or Latin America, as well as other countries including India, will be considered “not fully vaccinated” and forced to quarantine for 10 days on arrival from an amber list country. – Per TheGuardian."
While it is a countries right to determine who comes and goes, it should be taken into consideration that some of these countries don’t have strict documentation methods. This is a problem worldwide, currently. Getting a vaccination is one thing but if someone truly wanted to skip the vaccine, in some nations it would be pretty easy to get documentation that says a person was given it, when they did not.
COVID is still wreaking havoc on the travel industry and the tourism industry continues to take massive losses both in the United States and abroad. Nations continue to try and find a balance between allowing foreign visitors which bring income to local businesses, and keeping their own citizens safe.
In the U.S., some restrictions on foreign travel, mostly quarantine requirements, are changing and relaxing but the U.S. remains and “Amber” country and COVID statistics continue to fluctuate around the country state to state and city to city.
So what does this mean for you? It really only matters if you are planning to travel outside of the U.S. and are either traveling to a country that allows vaccinated individuals the freedom to enter without quarantine or do not but one thing is for certain, we are still far from traveling without worry or restrictions.