WASHINGTON — At the end of this year, President Joe Biden will lift temporary travel restrictions imposed on southern African countries following the discovery of the omicron variant of COVID-19, according to White House officials.
Last month, Biden announced restrictions on travel from Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe in an effort to curb the spread of the variant.
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In a Twitter post Friday morning, White House Assistant Press Secretary Kevin Munoz said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended lifting the temporary measure and that Biden plans to do so on Dec. 31.
“The restrictions gave us time to understand omicron and we know our existing vaccines work against omicron, (especially) boosted,” he wrote.
Health officials recommended lifting the restrictions because they were unlikely to have a significant impact on the U.S. as omicron has already been detected and spread across the country, according to Reuters, the first news organization to report the development.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Dec. 1 announced that the first case of COVID-19 linked to the omicron variant had been discovered in California. Since then, testing has found that the variant has overtaken the delta strain to become the most prevalent nationwide.
As of the week ending Dec. 18, COVID-19 cases caused by the omicron variant accounted for more than 73% of cases, according to data from the CDC. Globally, the variant has been reported in 110 countries, health officials said.
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Earlier this month, officials imposed new rules for people entering the U.S. by plane, which requires passengers to show negative COVID-19 tests taken no more than one day before traveling into the country, regardless of vaccination status.
Health officials have urged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and for people who have been fully vaccinated to get booster shots to protect themselves from serious infection from the virus.
As of Thursday, nearly 73% of the U.S. population – 241.5 million people – has gotten at least one dose of any of the available COVID-19 vaccines, according to the CDC. Almost 62% of Americans, or 204.7 million people, have been fully vaccinated, while over 31% of those who have been fully vaccinated have gotten booster shots, CDC data shows.
Since the start of the pandemic, officials have reported 51.8 million cases of COVID-19 nationwide, resulting in more than 815,000 deaths, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. Globally, 278.2 million cases have been reported, resulting in 5.3 million deaths, according to the university.