By Aiyeku Timothy
White House officials have disclosed that President Joe Biden will re-impose a Covid-19 travel ban on most non-US citizens who have been in Britain, Brazil, Ireland and much of Europe.
An official added that Biden will on Monday extend the ban to travellers who have recently been to South Africa amid warnings that new, more transmissible coronavirus variants are already establishing themselves in the United States.
The new president last week tightened mask-wearing rules and ordered quarantine for people flying into the United States, as he seeks to tackle the country’s worsening coronavirus criss.
Biden has said that the Covid-19 death toll would likely rise from 420,000 to half a million next month — and that drastic action was needed.
“We’re in a national emergency. It’s time we treated it like one,” he said last Thursday.
Ex-president Donald Trump in his last days in office, imposed a Covid-19 ban on travellers arriving from much of Europe and Brazil, but the Biden administration immediately said it would reverse the order due to come into effect on January 26.
Trump had announced an initial ban on January 31, 2020, on non-American travellers entering from China to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The ban was extended to European countries on March 14 as the pandemic entered full force.
Johns Hopkins University on Sunday said more than 25 million Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the US since the pandemic began.
Covid-19 is a top agenda for Biden as he takes over as US President.
