U.S. officials should weigh making vaccinations for COVID-19 a requirement for travelers taking domestic flights, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Biden and the country’s leading public health and infectious disease expert.
In an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday (Dec. 27), Fauci said that requiring vaccinations incentivizes more people to go and get the shots.
“If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered,” Fauci said.
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Fauci declined to say during the interview if he had any plans to discuss the mandate idea with Biden, and there are no official discussions taking place to suggest there is any timetable.
“It’s been considered but the recommendation I’ve gotten, it’s not necessary,” Biden told ABC News on Dec. 23.
When Fauci made a similar suggestion for a mandate in September, the U.S. Travel Association made its position known that while it believes that vaccines are the “fastest path back to normalcy for all,” it doesn’t endorse a mandate.
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“U.S. Travel has long maintained that there should be no mandatory vaccination requirement for domestic travel,” the Association said in a statement. “The science — including studies from the Harvard School of Public Health and the U.S. Department of Defense — overwhelmingly points to the safety of air travel as long as masks are worn.”
U.S. passengers are already required to wear masks to board planes and while in-flight, and only can momentarily remove them when eating or drinking.
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The omicron variant caused airlines to cancel hundreds of flights over the holiday weekend, partly due to outbreaks among staff, Reuters reported Monday (Dec. 27).
Per Reuters, the average number of new U.S. cases has risen 55% to more than 205,000 per day over the last week.
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