- Fellow explorers, there's finally some good news
coming out of the US Centers for Disease Control
when it comes to travel.
In particular, today the CDC updated their travel advisories
stating that it is now safe for fully vaccinated people
to travel within the United States.
That is great news.
There's two other points they made
about fully vaccinated people
that is, they are no longer
recommending that fully vaccinated people quarantine
and they're recommending that fully vaccinated people
no longer need to get a test to travel
anywhere within the United States.
Now, Hawaii still has that requirement in place
but we'll talk a little bit more about Hawaii
later as we go through this.
The CDC also put this handy reference guide together
to show you what they're recommending for domestic travel.
Now, if you are vaccinated and travel,
they are still recommending
that you wear a mask, that you stay away from zombies
and that you wash your filthy filthy hands.
Now for international travel
things are a little bit different.
While the CDC still says for international travel
that fully vaccinated travelers are at a low risk
from contracting COVID-19,
they do cite the new variants that are out there
potentially increasing the risk of spread and so,
fully vaccinated travelers returning to the United States
are still required to get a COVID 19 test
three days before they come back to the US,
and they're also advised to get a COVID 19 test
three to five days after their returned to the US.
Now of course, that actually assumes
the destination that you want to go to
is letting international travelers in,
many countries around the world
are still closed to Americans.
So now I know a lot of people are probably wondering,
Chris, how does this affect Hawaii?
Well, as I mentioned earlier
Hawaii still has their safe travel program in place
which requires travelers to getting negative COVID-19 tests
prior to arriving in Hawaii.
Now the Hawaiian government is rumored to be working
on a vaccine passport program
to allow people to not quarantine
provided that they've got their COVID-19 vaccine.
This recommendation coming out of the CDC
will likely put some increased pressure on Hawaii
to get that program rolling.
They've targeted mid May as a rollout date for it,
let's hope it comes by then, or maybe even sooner,
now that the CDC has thrown a little bit of gas on it
saying that, yeah it's safe to travel
within the United States,
and you know what, Hawaii is within the United States.
Now, speaking of traveling within the US,
if you're planning to travel this summer within the US,
I would recommend you make your travel plans
like ASAP right now,
because this news is sure to bring up travel demand,
more people are going to go and say,
hey, it's finally safe,
it's finally okay,
I don't have to watch my back,
I don't have to be worried about doing something
that's not okay,
and so that's going to drive prices up.
So make your flight bookings, make your hotel bookings,
definitely book your rental car,
because those are getting really expensive.
Currently 22% of Americans are fully vaccinated
meaning they've gotten their full sequence of shots
and it's been two weeks after they've received them.
Now, this still doesn't help international people
coming to the US,
because there's still a number of travel bans in place,
in particular from Europe and the UK.
It is rumored that the Biden administration
is working on lifting those restrictions
for the summer time,
but those new variants that are coming up in Europe
might impact those plans.
But definitely on the notes of Hawaii
and international travel into the US,
as soon as something changes
you can be sure I will be the first to let you know.
And now here in California, where girl OC Girl and I live,
all trends seem to be good.
Restaurants are reopening,
they're at like 50% capacity now,
movie theaters are back open,
theme parks were just allowed to reopen yesterday.
So if you're planning to visit some theme parks,
you want to know what they look like,
well, you could check out my video right here
of the Touch of Disney Food Festival at Disneyland
or if you want to check out some of the beach cities,
maybe like Santa Monica or Laguna Beach,
you might enjoy my beach walking series right here.
As usual, I won't say goodbye,
because I'll see you all in one of these two videos.