US forming expert groups on safely lifting global travel restrictions

The Biden administration is forming expert working groups with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the United Kingdom to determine how best to safely restart travel after 15 months of pandemic restrictions, a White House official said on Tuesday. Another US official said the administration will not move quickly to lift orders that bar people from much of the world from entering the United States because of the time it will take for the groups to do their work. The White House informed airlines and others in the travel industry about the groups, the official said. "While we are not reopening travel today, we hope that these expert working groups will help us use our collective expertise to chart a path forward, with a goal of reopening international travel with our key partners when it is determined that it is safe to do so," the White House official said, adding "any decisions will be fully guided by the objective analysis and recommendations by public health and medical experts." The groups will be led by the White House COVID Response Team and the National Security Council and include the CDC and other US agencies. The CDC said on Tuesday it was easing travel recommendations on 110 countries and territories, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Africa and Iran, but has declined to lift any COVID-19 travel restrictions. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the US travel restrictions in place since 2020 are subject to "an interagency conversation, and we are looking at the data in real time as to how we should move forward with that."<br/>