The holiday season is here and with a lot of travel. Traveling has been challenging with restrictions, weather, and an increased travel. Planning has become more important and flexibility even more so. So, if you are going anywhere during the month of December make sure you know what the rules of the road are.
If you are staying in the US, check your destination’s health department for any updates. You can find a listing here: https://www.cdc.gov/publichealthgateway/healthdirectories/index.html. Check for potential restrictions for any accomodations, reservations, or events that you may be attending. Recently, I was in NYC and we used an app called NYC Covid Safe for theatre and restaurant entry. I was also required to show proof for an event in Philadelphia. I had a new phone and the image didn’t transfer. Luckily, I had the portal for health provider and was able to pull up the documentation there.
As far as international travel, there are new travel restriction in place. The US warns not to travel to France, Portugal, Jordan, Andorra, Lichtenstein, Tanzania, and Cyprus due to high Covid levels. Also, there are new restrictions for testing and according to the CDC:
- If you plan to travel internationally, you will need to get a COVID-19 viral test (regardless of vaccination status or citizenship) no more than 1 day before you travel by air into the United States. You must show your negative result to the airline before you board your flight.
- If you recently recovered from COVID-19, you may instead travel with documentation of recovery from COVID-19 (i.e., your positive COVID-19 viral test result on a sample taken no more than 90 days before the flight’s departure from a foreign country and a letter from a licensed healthcare provider or a public health official stating that you were cleared to travel).
You are considered fully vaccinated:
- 2 weeks (14 days) after your dose of an accepted single-dose vaccine
- 2 weeks (14 days) after your second dose of an accepted 2-dose series
- 2 weeks (14 days) after you received the full series of an accepted COVID-19 vaccine (not placebo) in a clinical trial
- 2 weeks (14 days) after you received the full series of a Novavax (or Covovax) COVID-19 vaccine (not placebo) in a phase 3 clinical trial
- 2 weeks (14 days) after you received 2 doses of any “mix-and-match” combination of accepted COVID-19 vaccines administered at least 17 days apart*
If you don’t meet these requirements, you are NOT fully vaccinated.
* CDC has not recommended the use of mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccine primary series. However, such strategies are increasingly common in many countries outside of the United States. Therefore, for the of purpose of interpreting vaccination records for travel to the United States, CDC will accept combinations of accepted COVID-19 vaccines.
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