A traveler leaves a test center at Heathrow Airport on January 17, 2021 in London.
Hollie Adams | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The Biden administration, which entered on Monday, said it would not lift a ban on the entry of most visitors from Europe, Britain and Brazil shortly after President Donald Trump ordered the lifting of Covid-19 travel restrictions.
“With the worsening pandemic and the emergence of more contagious variants around the world, now is not the time to lift restrictions on international travel,” Jen Psaki, a spokesman for President-elect Joe Biden, tweeted.
Trump put the rules in place at the beginning of the pandemic to stop the spread of the virus and on Monday canceled them, just days before Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. They ban most non-Americans from entering the United States if they had been in Brazil, in the 26 Schengen countries of Europe, Ireland or the United Kingdom in the previous two weeks.
Trump’s order came less than a week after the United States said it would require passengers arriving from abroad, including U.S. citizens, to give negative results for Covid-19 before flying. This requirement shall enter into force on 26 January, the same day as the travel restrictions are lifted.
Airlines have repeatedly called on the US government to lift travel bans, which has led to a sharp drop in demand for air travel with pre-flight Covid-19 tests.