New rules for international travel announced today as experts fear the worst of the UK and South Africa COVID variants. The White House issued new restrictions to include passengers needing proof of negative COVID results within three days of their flight departure.
“It’s very nerve-wrecking, it’s just adding to the problems we already have.” Beatress Lynn is thinking twice about traveling even further next month for her birthday vacation.
She said, “when you know better, you do better.”
With two new variants across other countries, traveler Dianne Hurtle said she’s concerned too and wants the new administration to do something about it in the U.S.
“I don’t want anymore people coming and bringing it over here if they don’t have to,” Hurtle told CBS 46 at the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.
Dr. Anthony Fauci explained the new restrictions which are going into effect beginning Tuesday, January 26.
“People coming into the country are going to be required to have tests before they get on the plane.” He continued, “when they get off, they’re going
to have to have a quarantine as well as a second test.”
The restrictions come at a helpful time for researchers at Emory Institute who believe the South Africa variant is likely already here too
“It could be more lethal or deadly but I don’t think we have enough numbers or knowledge to know that,” Dr. Colleen Kraft said.
The Chief Medical Officer at Emory Hospital told CBS 46 the data is limited because the new mutations are developing faster than scientists can
develop ways to test them.
“We can’t really test for it easily though, it’s not something we can quickly bring up.” Kraft added, “We have to do more specific testing, not just the presence of SARS COVID 2.
We actually have to look for deletion in certain regions of genomes.”
Despite all they don’t know, she argues what they do know is traveling seems risker now than before.
“The cats already out the bag, we don’t have a lot of ability to stop transmission any longer.”
Emory is currently running samples to determine if the new variants transmit at even further ranges as opposed to six feet.
Copyright 2021 WGCL-TV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.