On the same day federal judges in two different courts blocked two different Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandates, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday it was working on tightening its current testing requirements for international travelers. Currently, fully vaccinated travelers are required to get tested within three days of boarding.
“CDC is working to modify the current Global Testing Order for travel as we learn more about the Omicron variant; a revised order would shorten the timeline for required testing for all international air travelers to one day before departure to the United States,” the agency said Tuesday.
“CDC is evaluating how to make international travel as safe as possible, including… considerations around additional post-arrival testing and self-quarantines,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said earlier in the day.
The adjustment to testing requirements, which could be announced as early as Thursday, would be the second change to U.S. travels rules in less than a week. On Monday, a travel ban on South Africa and seven other nearby countries took effect.
As the CDC was previewing the new testing requirements, the Biden administration was blocked in the courts Tuesday from enforcing mandates that would affect millions of American workers. One judge blocked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from enforcing its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. The other blocked the administration from enforcing a regulation that new government contracts must include clauses requiring that contractors’ employees get vaccinated.
In the CMS ruling, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty said the CMS lacked the authority to issue the mandate.
“There is no question that mandating a vaccine to 10.3 million healthcare workers is something that should be done by Congress, not a government agency,” Doughty
wrote in his ruling. “It is not clear that even an Act of Congress mandating a vaccine would be constitutional.”
While Doughty’s ruling covers most of the country, U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove’s ruling on the contractor vaccine mandate only applies to Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. It appears to be the first ruling against the contractor vaccine mandate.
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