U.S. Air Travel Mask Mandate Expires Next Week, But an Extension Could Be Coming
byDaniel McCarthy/
延伸到机场和航空旅行的美国所有公共交通的联邦面板授权将于4月18日星期一到期。但是,可能会延长。
According to the head of the White House’s COVID-19 task force Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky, is going to make the decision this week and an extension is “absolutely on the table.”
“这是一个疾病预防控制中心的决定,我认为它绝对在桌子上。”Jha told the TODAY Show on Monday.
The CDC first put the mandate in place in February 2021 and has been extended a number of times since its inception. According to Jha, Walensky’s decision is going to be based on a framework that the CDC scientists create, a framework that should come out over the next few days.
如果该框架基于COVID-19统计数据,则在某些由新BA引起的状态下的病例号。2Omicron子变量可以使CDC提示以扩展任务。据疾病预防控制中心(CDC)称,该变体负责近75%的新病例。
Still, while numbers in some states on are the rise, they still remain lower than the Omicron-surge at the beginning of the year and Jha told Today he was not “overly concerned” over the rise because “we were expecting this because we saw this in Europe,” he said.
The travel industry has largely seen the extension of the mask mandate, along with the continued inbound testing rules, as a major drag on its recovery. The U.S. Travel Associationhas continued to push for both of those rules to be lifted.
That mandate has also caused issues for those who are tasked with enforcing it, mainly flight attendants, who have been the subject of an escalating number of verbal, and sometimes physical, attacks on airplanes. Just this week,the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced the two largest-ever fines for passengers.