I don’t want to be controversial here, but I’d really like to know if there’s something I’m missing…
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2021 introduced requirements International travelers boarding flights to the United States must provide contact tracing information before traveling.
Specifically, before checking in within 72 hours of departure, passengers must provide contact information about where in the United States they will be staying upon arrival, including address and phone number.
Airlines must keep this information on file for 30 days and send it to the CDC upon request. “The purpose of collecting this information is to identify and locate passengers who may have been infected with a communicable disease for public health tracing purposes,” the statement said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we saw that this had value in theory. So while the US has never been great at contact tracing (to say the least), the coronavirus was treated as a public health emergency, so it’s unreasonable to think the information would be useful. It wasn’t.
However, it has already been more than four years since the pandemic began, and the coronavirus is no longer treated as an emergency in this country. That means federal funding for coronavirus vaccines and testing has all but ended. But every time someone flies into the United States, they must provide this contact tracing information.
I’m not saying that filling out this contact tracing is the most complicated thing in the world. Actually, it doesn’t, and it probably takes about a minute. But considering that tens of millions of travelers enter the United States by air every year, that’s a lot of time wasted.
Is this policy intentionally still in place?
This to me makes me wonder, is the CDC putting this policy in place because they actively think it has value, or is it just because someone forgot to rescind it? A question arises.
- Is the logic that if another major pandemic were to occur, at least the CDC would already be requesting information?
- The US did a terrible job with contact tracing the first time, so why should it be different the next time?
- Countries that have really done well with contact tracing during the pandemic no longer have such contact tracing requirements. So does the CDC think those countries are doing the wrong thing and the US is doing the right thing?
Is there something missing? I want to emphasize that I’m asking this question from someone who still often wears a mask while on a plane and has some sort of “microchip.” is. 😉 So, I’m not approaching this with an anti-CDC bias, but rather, I’m just approaching this from a perspective of what I consider common sense.
If I had to guess, I’d say that on some level this is one policy that continues to be welcomed because of how risk-averse people are and the “better safe than sorry” philosophy. I think so. No one will get mad at you for keeping a requirement like this, but you don’t want to be the one to remove it, only to see it as valuable information you’ll gain in the future.
conclusion
The CDC continues to require airlines to request contact tracing information from U.S.-bound air travelers within 72 hours of travel. I don’t understand this anymore. If I am missing something, I would love to be educated. If I’m not missing anything, consider this a gentle nudge for the CDC to reconsider this policy.
What do you think about the CDC’s contact tracing requirements for international flights? Are we missing anything?
