By ZEKE MILLER | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is lift­ing its re­quire­ment that in­ter­na­tion­al air trav­ellers to the U.S. take a COVID-19 test with­in a day be­fore board­ing their flights, eas­ing one of the last re­main­ing gov­ern­ment man­dates meant to con­tain the spread of the coro­n­avirus.

A se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial said the man­date ex­pires Sun­day at 12:01 a.m. EDT, say­ing the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion has de­ter­mined that it’s no longer nec­es­sary. The of­fi­cial, speak­ing Fri­day on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pre­view the for­mal an­nounce­ment, said that the agency would re-eval­u­ate the need for the test­ing re­quire­ment every 90 days and that it could be re­in­stat­ed if a trou­bling new vari­ant emerges.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion put in place the test­ing re­quire­ment last year, as it moved away from re­stric­tions that banned nonessen­tial trav­el from sev­er­al dozen coun­tries — most of Eu­rope, Chi­na, Brazil, South Africa, In­dia and Iran — and in­stead fo­cus­es on clas­si­fy­ing in­di­vid­u­als by the risk they pose to oth­ers. It came in con­junc­tion with a re­quire­ment that for­eign, non-im­mi­grant adults trav­el­ing to the Unit­ed States need to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, with on­ly lim­it­ed ex­cep­tions.

The ini­tial man­date al­lowed those who were ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed to show proof of a neg­a­tive test with­in three days of trav­el, while un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple had to present a test tak­en with­in one day of trav­el.

In No­vem­ber, as the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble omi­cron vari­ant swept the world, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion tough­ened the re­quire­ment and re­quired all trav­ellers, re­gard­less of vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus, to test with­in a day of trav­el to the U.S.

Air­line and tourism groups have been press­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion for months to elim­i­nate the test­ing re­quire­ment, say­ing it is dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from book­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trips. Many oth­er coun­tries have lift­ed their test­ing re­quire­ments for ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and boost­ed trav­ellers in a bit to in­crease tourism.

In Feb­ru­ary, the groups ar­gued the test­ing re­quire­ment was ob­so­lete be­cause of the high num­ber of omi­cron cas­es al­ready in every state, high­er vac­ci­na­tions rates and new treat­ments for the virus.

“I’m glad CDC sus­pend­ed the bur­den­some coro­n­avirus test­ing re­quire­ment for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers, and I’ll con­tin­ue to do all I can to sup­port the strong re­cov­ery of our hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try,” Sen. Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to, D-Nev., said in a state­ment.

The lift­ing of the re­quire­ment comes six weeks af­ter a fed­er­al judge end­ed the CDC’s mask re­quire­ment for mass tran­sit, in­clud­ing trains, planes, bus­es and tran­sit hubs, say­ing the agency ex­ceed­ed its au­thor­i­ty. The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is ap­peal­ing that rul­ing, say­ing it aims to pro­tect the CDC’s abil­i­ty to re­spond to fu­ture health emer­gen­cies.

The of­fi­cial said the CDC will con­tin­ue to rec­om­mend COVID-19 test­ing pri­or to air trav­el of any kind as a safe­ty pre­cau­tion.