From November 8th the restrictions on flights arriving from the Schengen area (and therefore from Italy), the United Kingdom, Ireland, China, India and Brazil will be lifted for vaccinated people only. For vaccinated people arriving from Mexico and Canada, entry will also be allowed through the land border.
According to the new CDC guidelines, all travelers with a visa or ESTA and “fully vaccinated”, i.e. who have completed the vaccination with one of the vaccines approved by the FDA (Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson) or with one of the vaccines included in the Emergency Use Listing (EUL) of the World Health Organization (for example AstraZeneca), will be able to travel again to the United States.
Those who have received a mixed vaccination (in case of a second dose) are also considered “fully vaccinated”, provided that they have been vaccinated with vaccines recognized by the FDA or included in the EUL.
For vaccinated travelers, it remains mandatory to show at boarding the negative result of a Covid-test (molecular or antigenic) carried out within 3 days before departure for the United States, and it is recommended to do a further test (molecular or antigenic) between the third and fifth day of arrival in the country.
We are awaiting directions from the State Department on how the entry to the United States for unvaccinated travelers will be regulated.
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UPDATE OF JULY 6th, 2021 ON NATIONAL INTEREST EXCEPTIONS FOR ENTRY IN THE UNITED STATES
The U.S. Department of State has announced that, starting from July 6th, 2021, all National Interest Exception (NIE) authorizations will be valid for 12 months for multiple entries with retroactive effect, and valid for NIEs issued (with a Visa or ESTA) in the last 12 months.
The 12 months must be calculated from the date of issue of the NIE.
Those who have received more than one NIE authorization will have to calculate the 12 months from the date of the last NIE issued.
The update does not affect the Visa categories that qualify for the NIE, which do not undergo any changes.
Two examples are given below, and please refer to the following U.S. State Department communication for more details: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/extension-validity-for-nies-for-china-iran-brazil-south-africa-schengen-uk-ireland-india.html
Examples:
Mario Rossi has a NIE with ESTA issued on January 6th, 2021 – from today this NIE authorization will be considered valid until January 5th, 2022, for multiple entries (even if originally valid for 30 days)
Mario Rossi obtained a Visa with a NIE annotation on January 6th, 2021 – from today this authorization will be considered valid until January 5th, 2022, for multiple entries (even if originally valid for 30 days)
