As of January 26, 2022, all foreign nationals wishing to travel to the United States NEED to be fully vaccinated unless exempted.
If you are a foreign national (person who is not a U.S. Citizen, a U.S. legal permanent resident (Green card holders), or a U.S. national) wishing to enter the United States by air, land, or sea, you must be “fully vaccinated” with an approved COVID-19 vaccine in order to be able to travel to and enter the United States.
You must be prepared to show the appropriate vaccine documentation to the airline at an airport, or to a CBP Official at an airport, border crossing or seaport.
You must be considered to be “fully vaccinated.” This means:
2 weeks (14 days) must have passed after your dose of an accepted single-dose vaccine;
2 weeks (14 days) must have passed after your second dose of an accepted 2-dose series;
2 weeks (14 days) must have passed after you received the full series of an accepted COVID-19 vaccine (not placebo) in a clinical trial; or
2 weeks (14 days) must have passed after you received 2 doses of any “mix-and-match” combination of accepted COVID-19 vaccines administered at least 17 days apart.
Thus far, the United States has approved the following COVID vaccines for travel to the United States: Pfizer-Biotech, Moderna, Janssen/J&J, AstraZeneca, Covaxin, Covishield, BIBP/Sinopharm, Sinovac, and Novavax/Covovax.
You will not be able to travel to the United States by air, land, or sea if you are not “fully vaccinated” and you DO NOT meet one of the clearly delineated exemptions outlined on the CDC’s website. For more information regarding the exemptions to not being “fully vaccinated” and being able to travel to the United States, we encourage you to visit the CDC’s website at: www.cdc.gov.
As of January 26, 2022, all travelers 2 years old or older need to get tested or show proof of recovery from COVID-19 before traveling to the United States by air.
While only foreign nationals (unless exempted) need to be “fully vaccinated” in order to enter the United States by air, land, or sea, as of December 6, 2021 there has been a change in the COVID testing requirements to enter the United States by air.
All U.S. citizens, U.S. legal permanent residents, U.S. nationals and foreign nationals who are 2 years old or older need to take a viral COVID-19 test within 1 day of their flight departure to the United States, and show their negative COVID test result to the airline before being allowed to board their flight to the United States.
In lieu of the negative COVID-19 test result, persons travelling to the United States by air can also show documentation of recovery from COVID-19 (i.e., your positive COVID-19 viral test result on a sample taken no more than 90 days before the flight’s departure from a foreign country and a letter from a licensed healthcare provider or a public health official stating that you were cleared to travel).
As of January 26, 2022, there are no COVID-19 related travel restrictions imposed on any nation.
The travel restrictions that the United States had imposed on eight Southern African nations (South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Namibia, Malawi and Mozambique) as a result of the Omicron variant, and which prevented foreign nationals from traveling to the United States if they had been in any of the above-listed countries within the previous 14 days prior to their travel to the United States, were lifted as of December 31, 2021.