Ma­jor US me­dia pub­lish­er, Reuters, is re­port­ing that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is work­ing on a plan to re­quire near­ly all for­eign vis­i­tors to the Unit­ed States to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19.

In an ex­clu­sive news re­port, Reuters says it re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion from a White House of­fi­cial that this is part of ef­forts to even­tu­al­ly lift trav­el re­stric­tions that bar much of the world from en­ter­ing the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to Reuters re­port, the of­fi­cial said: “The White House wants to re-open trav­el, which would boost busi­ness for the air­lines and tourism in­dus­try but is not ready to im­me­di­ate­ly lift re­stric­tions be­cause of the ris­ing COVID-19 case load and high­ly trans­mis­si­ble COVID-19 Delta vari­ant.” 

The Reuters re­port notes that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has in­ter­a­gency work­ing groups work­ing to have a new sys­tem ready for when the US re­opens for trav­el.

"This in­cludes a phased ap­proach that over time will mean, with lim­it­ed ex­cep­tions, that for­eign na­tion­als trav­el­ing to the Unit­ed States (from all coun­tries) need to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed," Reuters quotes the White House of­fi­cial.

At present, some coun­tries, in­clud­ing Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom, are re­lax­ing or lift­ing re­stric­tions for vac­ci­nat­ed Amer­i­cans to trav­el.

The Reuters re­port says the White House has been dis­cussing with air­lines and oth­ers about how best to im­ple­ment a pol­i­cy of re­quir­ing vac­cines for for­eign vis­i­tors.  The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is ex­pect­ed to clar­i­fy sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing what proof it would ac­cept of vac­ci­na­tion, and if the Unit­ed States would ac­cept vac­cines that some coun­tries are us­ing but which have not yet been au­tho­rized by U.S. reg­u­la­tors.

Cur­rent­ly, the Unit­ed States bars most non-U.S. cit­i­zens who with­in the last 14 days have been in the Unit­ed King­dom, the 26 Schen­gen na­tions in Eu­rope with­out bor­der con­trols, Ire­land, Chi­na, In­dia, South Africa, Iran and Brazil.

Reuters ob­serves that pre­vi­ous White House in­ter­a­gency talks had fo­cused on re­quir­ing vac­cines for near­ly all for­eign vis­i­tors ar­riv­ing by air.  

How­ev­er, the White House of­fi­cial did not in­di­cate to Reuters whether the ad­min­is­tra­tion is de­vel­op­ing plans to al­so re­quire vis­i­tors ar­riv­ing from Mex­i­co and Cana­da to be vac­ci­nat­ed be­fore cross­ing land bor­ders.  Cur­rent­ly, the on­ly for­eign trav­ellers al­lowed to cross by land in­to the Unit­ed States from Mex­i­co and Cana­da are es­sen­tial work­ers such as truck dri­vers or nurs­es.

Reuters al­so re­ports the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion is yet to say if it will main­tain ex­ist­ing re­stric­tions, but quot­ed the of­fi­cial, thus: “In­fec­tions ap­pear like­ly to con­tin­ue to in­crease in the weeks ahead…  The Unit­ed States will main­tain ex­ist­ing trav­el re­stric­tions at this point.”

The Reuters re­port al­so points to In­dus­try of­fi­cials who be­lieve it will be at least weeks and po­ten­tial­ly months be­fore re­stric­tions are lift­ed.

[Orig­i­nal re­port from Reuters by David Shep­ard­son, with Edit­ing by Chris Reese and David Gre­go­rio]