President Joe Biden will on Thursday announce a winter campaign against Covid-19, with new testing requirements for travellers and a surge in vaccination efforts – but no clear path to defeating the pandemic he was elected to confront. Biden has brought steady leadership after the chaotic Donald Trump years, but the mutating coronavirus continues to defy him, helping drive his approval ratings deep underwater.
In a speech from the National Institutes of Health research center outside Washington, Biden is set to list a raft of actions designed to tamp down Covid-19 during the winter as the latest Omicron variant spreads worldwide.
The first US case was detected on Wednesday. Top of the list will be an announcement that toughened rules on testing for travellers will take effect within days, a senior administration official said.
Biden will “announce that we are further strengthening our testing requirements so that starting early next week, all international travellers will be required to test negative within one day of their departure to the United States,” the official told reporters.
This will apply to all travellers, both US and foreign, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated, the official aid. For domestic travellers, Biden will announce he is extending a mask mandate on airplanes, trains and other public transport through mid-March.
The barrage of measures is partly meant to reassure Americans that Biden is doing everything possible to prevent the pandemic from derailing the impressive US economic recovery – and the Christmas holidays. Biden and his aides have repeatedly stressed in recent days that there will be no return to mass shut downs.
Source: eNCA
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