Anthony Fauci recommended requiring vaccination of passengers on domestic flights in the US

The US government should require that passengers on domestic flights be vaccinated, the White House chief epidemiologist Anthony Fauci said Monday, in a measure that would seek to encourage the population to be vaccinated amid the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Currently, the North American country requires that non-citizens arriving by air be fully vaccinated. Fauci said expanding those requirements are worth considering.

“Vaccination is being demanded so that people get on the planes that arrive in the country, it is understandable. They do not want to bring more cases to the country. But if you are talking about requiring vaccination to get on a plane at the national level, that is just another of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider.” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, told the channel MSNBC.

Fauci did not say whether he had made this recommendation to President Biden, but added that a vaccination requirement for air travel would be a new incentive to get vaccinated.

“There are requirements that you might want to meet if you want to get into college, where you want to go to college, or want to work in certain places. When you make vaccination a requirement, it is another incentive to vaccinate more people. If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that is something that should be seriously considered.” He said.