President Joe Biden may impose a pre-departure testing requirement for domestic flights and the administration is “actively looking” at the policy according to Dr Marty Cetron, director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Dr Centron said: “conversations that are ongoing and looking at what the types and locations of testing might be… We’re actively looking at it,” when asked whether recently introduced pre-departure testing rules for international arrivals could also be expanded to domestic flights.
“We realize that there’s been a dramatic evolution and increase in both testing platforms and testing capacity. I think this is a really important part of our toolkit to combat this pandemic,” Dr Centron continued in comments reported by Reuters.
Pre-departure testing rules came into force on Wednesday after being initially approved by the Trump administration. Donald Trump had planned to lift travel bans with the use of pre-departure testing but President Biden reimposed the travel ban on Europe, the UK and Brazil on Wednesday.
In an Executive Order that Biden signed on his first full day in office, he ordered federal agencies to carry out a review of current health protections for air travel. The order said agencies would make recommendations on how they could “impose additional public health measures for domestic travel.”
The executive order did not specify a timeframe for when the new rules could be introduced.
