Day: May 25, 2021

With less than two months remaining before the opening ceremony, the Tokyo Olympics received another jolt Monday when the U.S. government issued a warning for its citizens not to travel to Japan due to rising rates of new COVID-19 cases.

The State Department issued its highest travel advisory warning, Level 4, citing Japan’s slow vaccination rate and the country’s own restrictions on travelers from the United States.

A separate warning issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said “even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Japan.”

The Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to take place from July 23 to August 8 after a one-year postponement as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe. But the Japanese capital and other parts of Japan are under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections that has overwhelmed hospitals across the country, prompting growing public sentiment against staging the event.

The opposition was boosted by an open letter earlier this month from the Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association, which represents about 6,000 primary care doctors and hospitals, urging Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to convince the International Olympic Committee to cancel the games.

The current outbreak has already prompted Japanese authorities to ban foreign audiences from attending the Olympics. But Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters Tuesday the warning does not prohibit essential travel to Japan, and that authorities there do not detect any change in Washington’s support for Japan to go through with staging the Olympics.

Japan has recorded just 722,668 total COVID-19 infections and 12,351 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, but has only inoculated just under five percent of its population.

Hong Kong warning

In Hong Kong, a high-ranking official is warning that the city may soon have to discard millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses because not enough people are getting inoculated before the doses expire.

Thomas Tsang, a former controller of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection and a member of the government’s vaccine task force, told public broadcaster RTHK Tuesday there is only a “three-month window” to use the first batch of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, a situation complicated by current plans to close the community vaccination centers after September.

Hong Kong bought rough doses of Pfizer and China’s Sinovac vaccine to cover its entire 7.5 million citizens, but only 2.1 million have taken the shots since the city’s vaccination program began in late February.

Tsang said it was “just not right” that Hong Kong was sitting on an unused pile of doses while the rest of the world “is scrambling for vaccines” and warned that the city would not be buying anymore doses.

Observers have blamed the situation on a number of factors, including vaccine hesitancy, online disinformation, a lack of urgency in a city that has largely avoided a major outbreak of the virus, and rising distrust of authorities in Hong Kong and China.

Source: Voice of America

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – U.S. airlines and agencies are preparing for increased domestic air travel this summer even as the government continues to debate whether to allow more foreign travelers to visit.

Shares in American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines were sharply higher on Tuesday after top executives said that the pace of a leisure travel recovery was increasing.

“We’ve been very, very pleased with the pace of demand recovery,” Delta President Glen Hauenstein told an industry conference. “Bookings have been better than expected.”

As more Americans pass through airports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to hire another 1,000 officers by July 4, a peak U.S. travel period, after hiring 3,000 officers since Jan 1.

“We have already seen a sharp rise at the nation’s airports and will continue to experience steady increases throughout the summer,” Acting TSA Administrator Darby LaJoye told a news conference at Reagan National Airport outside Washington.

The TSA screened 1.86 million passengers on Sunday, the highest daily total since March 2020.

United said it now expects its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to be positive in the third quarter and trimmed its forecast for a decline in unit revenue in the current quarter.

And American is seeing “encouraging signs” in business and international travel, which have been hit hard during the pandemic, Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr said.

The improvements come as more American become vaccinated, companies prepare for workers to return to offices and travel, and as more countries open their borders.

However, the United States continues to bar the entry of nearly all non-U.S. citizens from most of Europe, South Africa, India, China, Iran and Brazil, despite pressure from travel groups to lift restrictions.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at the press conference the government is “following the facts, the data, the science in making the decision as to when business, international travel actually can resume… This is something we are evaluating each and every day.”

The administration has held extensive meetings on the topic, officials have told Reuters, but made no decisions.

Industry officials think Biden could lift restriction on the United Kingdom and Ireland as soon as early June. COVID-19 cases in both countries have declined.

Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, told Reuters “the UK is the furthest along. Our belief is, if we can open UK, the rest follows.”

Source: Voice of America