The Biden administration isn’t ruling out imposing domestic travel restrictions on unvaccinated Americans, even as its vaccine mandate on large employers is hung up in court.
White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration is “open to” putting rules on exactly where and when Americans can travel even within their own country if they don’t get fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“Everything’s on the table,” Jean-Pierre said when asked why the White House hasn’t imposed travel restrictions on unvaxxed Americans, even as it lifts bans on international travelers who’ve gotten the jab.
“We just don’t have any announcement to preview right now on this, so I don’t have anything more to share on the domestic travel,” Jean-Pierre added.
The push forward – even to the point of suggesting the White House may try to restrict U.S. travelers within their own country – comes just days after a three-judge panel of the Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Saturday granted a temporary injunction against execution of Joe Biden’s mandate that all businesses with 100 or more employees get their staff injected with the COVID vaccine or subject their workers to weekly mandatory testing for a virus they may or may not even have.
Just under 79 percent of Americans 12 and older have gotten at least one shot, with slightly more than 68 percent having been fully vaccinated.