BRENT PIN­HEIRO
brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

White House COVID-19 Re­sponse Co­or­di­na­tor Jeff Zients caused quite a stir on Mon­day when he an­nounced the lat­est US trav­el guide­lines. Come ear­ly No­vem­ber, all for­eign adult trav­ellers need to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed to en­ter the USA by air. The new pol­i­cy doesn’t ap­ply to land cross­ings.

Here are five things to know about the new pol­i­cy and how it af­fects Trin­bag­on­ian trav­ellers:

Which vac­cines will be ac­cept­ed?

That’s the ques­tion every­one is ask­ing but right now we don’t know. The White House says they will let the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) de­cide which vac­cines make the list. The US is cur­rent­ly us­ing three dif­fer­ent vac­cines – Mod­er­na, Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech, and John­son & John­son. Of those three, two are avail­able in T&T at the mo­ment. The As­traZeneca vac­cine is con­sid­ered to be one of the work­horse vac­cines as it has been used ex­ten­sive­ly in Eu­rope and all over the world so there’s a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that it will make the list. The CDC can choose to al­low all WHO-ap­proved vac­cines, or they can stick with on­ly the US-ap­proved vac­cines. My ad­vice is if you’re go­ing to get vac­ci­nat­ed now, specif­i­cal­ly to be able to trav­el to the US, then ask for ei­ther the J&J shot or Pfiz­er. The Min­istry of Health has made 50,000 more Pfiz­er shots avail­able for adults, so sup­ply is not an is­sue.

Are vac­ci­na­tion cards re­quired?

A vac­ci­na­tion card will be re­quired to show proof of vac­ci­na­tion. While the CDC will de­ter­mine what the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed” is, the gen­er­al rule of thumb is that you’re con­sid­ered to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed two weeks af­ter your sec­ond dose. If you took the J&J vac­cine, which is a one-shot vac­cine, then it’s two weeks af­ter that shot. The on­ly vac­ci­na­tion card ac­cept­ed for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el is the WHO In­ter­na­tion­al Cer­tifi­cate of Vac­ci­na­tion or Pro­phy­lax­is (ICV). If you have a lo­cal Min­istry of Health vac­ci­na­tion card (those are the black and white ones) then you will need to get it switched over at your lo­cal Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health. Lo­ca­tions are list­ed on the Min­istry of Health web­site. You will need a valid trav­el itin­er­ary and the process takes 3-5 work­ing days.  Note that you can en­ter T&T with your lo­cal vac­ci­na­tion card, how­ev­er, the ICV card is re­quired for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el.

There are sev­er­al mo­bile apps that work as dig­i­tal vac­cine pass­ports, but for now, there is not a fed­er­al dig­i­tal so­lu­tion in the Unit­ed States.

Will quar­an­tine be manda­to­ry?

No. Un­less you hold an Amer­i­can pass­port, you will not be re­quired to quar­an­tine up­on ar­rival in the Unit­ed States. Keep in mind, how­ev­er, that there may be quar­an­tine reg­u­la­tions de­pend­ing on the state that you are trav­el­ling to so be sure to re­search your des­ti­na­tion well.

Will tests still be re­quired?

Yes, you will still be re­quired to take a pre-de­par­ture COVID-19 test with­in three days of your flight, and be able to show proof of a neg­a­tive re­sult be­fore board­ing. Im­por­tant to note is that the CDC does not specif­i­cal­ly say 72 hours be­fore your flight. Ac­cord­ing to the CDC, this is to pro­vide more flex­i­bil­i­ty to trav­ellers. Test va­lid­i­ty does not de­pend on the time of the flight or the time of day that the test was ad­min­is­tered. For ex­am­ple, if your flight is at 2 pm on a Sat­ur­day, you could board with a neg­a­tive test that was tak­en any time on the pri­or Wednes­day or af­ter. This test­ing re­quire­ment is in place for any per­son two years or old­er.

Trav­ellers who have had COVID-19 can pro­vide proof of re­cov­ery in the form of a let­ter from a li­censed health-care provider clear­ing the pas­sen­ger for trav­el. 

RT-PCR tests and anti­gen tests are avail­able here in T&T, start­ing at $900 and $350 re­spec­tive­ly.

Will con­tact trac­ing will be re­quired?

All air­lines will be re­quired to col­lect the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of every pas­sen­ger and hold it for 30 days. This is in case a pas­sen­ger is ex­posed to some­one with COVID-19 and they need to be no­ti­fied. This means all US-in­bound trav­ellers will be re­quired to pro­vide in­fo such as a work­ing email ad­dress and a phone num­ber. If you have one of those slight­ly em­bar­rass­ing email ad­dress­es, con­sid­er chang­ing it as the CDC can re­quest that in­for­ma­tion from the air­line. No­body at the CDC wants to be send­ing an email to saucy­sug­ar­dumpling1983@ya­hoo.com to tell them that they have been ex­posed to COVID-19.