This last year has been a crazy one and was completely unpredictable. In 2019 the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, China. This was given the name Covid19 and although the Chinese authorities imposed a lockdown in the city of Wuhan to try and prevent the virus from spreading elsewhere, they did not act quick enough and by the time this happened people from Wuhan had already left the area and the virus began to spread. The virus reached the USA in the early months of 2020 and the lives of citizens in the USA have not been the same since. The USA was hit badly by the pandemic as they were unprepared and as there is such a large population here and many states are so densely populated it was the perfect place for the virus to spread. There was a national lockdown that was imposed in March 2020 and since then each state has had various lockdowns with different easings of restrictions. One of the biggest changes that came as a result of the pandemic was that the USA closed its borders to tourists, there was a ban on travel between Europe, as Italy was the epicenter of the pandemic and the USA. The past years have been a rollercoaster with things getting better and then getting worse and it’s been hard to follow so we’ve rounded up the current travel restrictions for the USA.

Domestic Travel

There have been many problems caused by the limited travel that is allowed for US citizens within the US. There are some obvious problems that would arise from having to stay in the state that you live in, such as if you usually commute to work in another state then the initial restrictions would prevent you from being able to do this or if your family and loved ones live in another state it would have been hard to spend such a long period of time not being able to visit them. There have also been other problems that are not as obvious such as different states have different specialties; many people hire people from other states to complete work for example if you’re a roofer CT as Connecticut is known for its roofers you’d usually be hired by companies in other states as they require the expertise. This means that it is not just the individual worker who cannot travel who would be struggling but companies who needed workers from out of state would also suffer. Luckily, the restrictions are much more relaxed now as the threat level of the virus is much lower. Some things are still different to before the pandemic hit, the official advice is to delay any travel until you have received both doses of the vaccine and even when you have it is still mandatory to wear a mask when traveling unless you’re exempt from health reasons.

International Travel

International travel to the US is still very limited. Whilst there was talk of air bridges on major routes such as London – New York, these were never put into place. The travel ban that was placed on Europe at the start of the pandemic has not yet been lifted and it is hard to say if this will be lifted anytime soon. If you are a US citizen however and you’ve been in one of the places that are on the no-travel list, you will still be able to return home but you will be required to show proof of a negative test at the airport and you will be required to quarantine on arrival in the USA.