The US will accept the entry of travelers with a mixture of vaccine types

USA will accept from November 8 the entry of travelers immunized against the COVID-19 with a mixture of doses of different types of vaccines, provided they have been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO).

This is confirmed by the latest update of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, which further confirms that immunization tests will only be accepted with those types of vaccines that have been approved by the WHO.

“People who have a combination of two (different) doses of a double dose vaccine that has been cleared by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) or is on the WHO emergency use list they will be considered vaccinated with the complete schedule, “a CDC spokeswoman told Efe this Saturday.

“Although the CDC has not recommended mixing vaccine types in a primary series, we recognize that this is increasingly common in other countries, so it should be accepted for the interpretation of vaccination tests,” added the source.

The White House announced this Friday that on November 8 it will open its air and land borders to international travelers vaccinated with the complete guideline against COVID-19, including those from those countries that have been subject to entry restrictions for more than a year, like Spain or Brazil.

The latest CDC update in this regard, published on its website late on Friday, emphasizes that, “for purposes of entry into the United States, accepted vaccines will include those authorized or approved by the FDA or that are on the list of WHO emergency use ”.

So far, the WHO has licensed the three FDA-approved vaccines – those from Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Janssen (from Johnson & Johnson) -; and has also listed two versions of the AstraZeneca vaccine, in addition to the Sinopharm and Sinovac sera.

That list does not include vaccines like the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese CanSino, which are being administered in countries like Mexico; This led this week to the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to ask the WHO to accelerate the process to include these serums on its emergency list.

“The WHO has to act with rectitude, without ideological tendencies, with adherence to science,” said López Obrador, who considered “common sense” to authorize drugs that “have helped and have not harmed.”

The White House also announced this week that it will open the land borders with Mexico and Canada, which have been closed to non-essential travel since March 2020, coinciding with the outbreak of the pandemic and still with Donald Trump as president.

The plan to open those land borders will consist of two phases. The first will take effect on November 8 and will require proof of vaccination for trips considered “non-essential”, such as tourism or visits.

The second will be in January 2022, in which proof of vaccination will be mandatory for all travelers, including truckers, who will thus have time to get vaccinated before that requirement takes effect.

The lifting of the restrictions also benefits international travelers who are vaccinated and who fly from countries subject to travel restrictions so far due to the pandemic, a list that includes the 26 European states of the Schengen area, in addition to the United Kingdom, Ireland , Brazil, China, Iran, South Africa and India.