Vaccine mandate for domestic travel in US? Experts disagree

Rochelle Walensky, the director of United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seems to be on different pages with Anthony Fauci, White House advisor on COVID, about mandating vaccines for domestic travel. 

While speaking to the National Public Radio on Tuesday, Dr Walensky said in a statement, “Certainly domestic flights have been a topic of conversation but that is not something we are revisiting right now”, according to reports from Reuters.

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Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief science adviser on the pandemic response, said that such a mandate might drive up the nation’s lagging vaccination rate as well as confer stronger protection on flights, for which federal regulations require all those age 2 and older to wear a mask.

“When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci told MSNBC on Monday. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered“, according to reports from Associated Press.

The United States currently has certain travel restrictions, linked to COVID, in place. However, most of these are on international travel and require inbound passengers to be fully vaccinated against the disease.

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The idea of mandating COVID vaccines for those travelling domestically in the country was reportedly floated in the White House earlier this year. But administration officials saw too many legal challenges to a possible mandate, dampening its impact even before it is imposed.

Data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show more than 241 million Americans, about 77% of the eligible population age 5 and over, have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Officials believe, though, that there is some overcount in the figures due to record-keeping errors in the administration of booster shots.