The European Union is expected to sign off on plans for Americans who have had their coronavirus jabs to fly to Europe without having to quarantine or take a Covid test in advance.
The EU's new plan would see member states adopting uniform entry requirements, meaning vaccinated holidaymakers from low-risk countries - such as the United States and the UK - would be able to enter its member states.
America is expected to be included on the EU's expanded 'green list' of permitted holiday travel on Wednesday as the bloc's ambassadors are set to confirm a European Commission proposal to lift restrictions on well-vaccinated nations.
Those without vaccinations will be required to present a negative Covid test or evidence of immunity, which can come from recently recovered from the virus.
For travelers from the UK, it is expected that member states will be recommended to prepare digital portals that will allow Britons to use the country's health service app as a vaccine passport, the Daily Telegraph reported.
But the US has no such nation-wide app, and so vaccinated US travelers will likely be asked to input information from their vaccines cards before travel, although exactly how this would work in practice is currently unclear.
The European Union is expected to sign off on plans for Americans who have had their coronavirus jabs to fly to Europe without having to quarantine or take a Covid test in advance. Pictured: A healthcare worker fills in a vaccination card in New York
America is expected to be included on the EU's expanded 'green list' of permitted holiday travel on Wednesday as the bloc's ambassadors are set to confirm a European Commission proposal to lift restrictions on well-vaccinated nations. Pictured: Eiffel tower, Paris (file photo)
Last month, the head of the EU's executive body told the New York Times that all American tourists who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with jabs approved by the bloc's Medicine's Agency would be allowed entry.
At the time, it was reported that talks between authorities in the US and the EU to make vaccine certificates acceptable as proof of immunity for visitors were in an advanced stage.
'The Americans, as far as I can see, use European Medicines Agency-approved vaccines,' Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, told The Times in April.
'This will enable free movement and the travel to the European Union.'
'Because one thing is clear: All 27 member states will accept, unconditionally, all those who are vaccinated with vaccines that are approved by E.M.A.,' she added.
The European Medicines Agency has approved all three of the vaccines being rolled out in the US' highly successful vaccination program - Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson shots.
Pictured: Visitors and staff wearing protective face masks, walk down the Main Street of Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallee on the outskirts of Paris. - Disneyland Paris, normally Europe's biggest tourist attraction
The EU's new plan would see member states adopting uniform entry requirements, meaning vaccinated holidaymakers from low-risk countries - such as the United States and the UK - would be able to enter its member states. Pictured: A street in Portugal
As of May 16, 157.5 million people, or 47.1 percent of the US population, had been given at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States, with 123.5 million - or 36.7 percent being fully vaccinated.
From Wednesday, these 123.5 million people are expected to be allowed to travel to countries within the European Union without the need to quarantine.
In the EU, meanwhile, at least 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been given as of Tuesday, according to AFP data tallying up official figures given by member states' health services.
The milestone indicates that the EU should be on track to meet its goal of fully vaccinating 70 percent of adults - meaning roughly 255 million people out of its total 448 million population - by late July.
The data showed that Malta was leading the EU table, with 32.5 percent of its small population fully vaccinated, while Bulgaria was trailing badly, with just 6.1 percent inoculated.
Pictured: Travelers wearing protective masks line up to check-in for JetBlue Airways Corp. flights in Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York, on Friday, March 26, 2021. Those without vaccinations will be required to present a negative Covid test or evidence of immunity, which can come from recently recovered from the virus
Of the big EU countries, Germany has 11.1 percent fully vaccinated, France has 13.5 percent, Italy has 14.6 percent and Spain has 15.4 percent.
By way of comparison with other wealthy territories, Israel has 59 percent of its population inoculated with two doses, and Britain has 30 percent done.
According to The Times, diplomats from Europe's tourism destinations - many of which have economies that greatly benefit from tourism - have been arguing for weeks that the EU's criteria for determining whether a country is a 'safe' origin purely based on low cases of coronavirus are becoming irrelevant due to vaccines.
Technical discussions have also been on-going for several weeks between the EU and the US over the viability of making vaccine certificates from different origins readable so that people can travel without restrictions.
It is hoped that government-issued vaccine cards issued by foreign governments will become acceptable and readable in the EU and the US.
The shift in attitude towards American tourists provides a stark contrast to a year age when, as the pandemic surged across the United States amid the world's worst outbreak, they were largely unwelcome in Europe.
Now, Americans are set to be some of the first travelers to be allowed back from outside the continent, as the average number of new daily coronavirus cases in the US sits at its lowest point since mid-September last year.
May 17 saw the US record 53,497 new coronavirus cases, although this was higher than the new daily infections over the last week. By contrast, at the height of the pandemic in January, over 300,000 cases were recorded in a single day.
The acceptance of US tourists does however highlight growing global vaccine inequality, with richer nations with access to millions of vaccines allowed to travel long before other less wealthy nationals, some of which are yet to even start vaccinating their citizens.
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