Governments must drop COVID-19 vaccination need for international travel: IATA

Dubai: Countries must be willing to take on some risk to get their international flight services adjust to operating in COVID-19 times.

This is what the International Air Transport Association (IATA) will be advising governments, and get them to implement the World Health Organisation’s latest travel guidance. The guidance recommends a ‘risk-based approach’ in implementing measures related to COVID-19 and international travel.

This will be presented to the WHO’s COVID-19 International Health Regulations Emergency Committee later today.

The ‘guidance’

Under these measures, governments will:

• Not require proof of COVID-19 vaccination as a mandatory condition for entry or exit.

• Remove measures such as testing and/or quarantine requirements for travellers who are fully vaccinated or have had a confirmed previous COVID-19 infection within the past six months.

• Ensure alternative pathways for unvaccinated individuals through testing so that they are able to travel internationally. The WHO recommends rRT-PCR tests or antigen detection rapid diagnostic tests (Ag-RDTs) for this purpose.

• Only implement test and/or quarantine measures for international travellers “on a risk-based manner” with policies on testing and quarantine regularly reviewed to ensure they are lifted when no longer necessary.

“These commonsense, risk-based recommendations from WHO, if followed by states, will allow for international air travel to resume while minimizing the chance of importing COVID-19," said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director-General. "As WHO notes — and as the latest UK testing data proves — international travelers are not a high-risk group in terms of COVID-19.

"Out of 1.65 million tests carried out on arriving international passengers in the UK since February, only 1.4 per cent were positive for COVID-19. It’s long past time for governments to incorporate data into risk-based decision-making process for re-opening borders.”