New COVID-testing orders only ‘one more hit’ for the pandemic-exhausted travel business

Key takeaways: 

• Travel within U.S. and Canada is free from new laws for now, but that may vary. 
• Travel insurance expert Martin Firestone lays out what travellers should know about the newest travel limitations.

US and Canada exempt from travel constraints: 

After almost a year of dropped plans and limited tours, COVID-weary travellers and those in the tourism business have been thrown for yet another loop after the federal government completed new travel laws this week intended to keep a cap on the extent of the omicron coronavirus variant.

On Monday, Ottawa declared new laws demanding incoming air travellers from all nations besides the United States to be tested for COVID-19 upon return, regardless of whether they’re vaccinated or not. And they’ll also have to isolate themselves until their test results come back negative.

Those new rules are in addition to being conditions that anyone coming to Canada must take and pass a COVID test within 72 hours of departure.

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It’s sad news for an industry that can barely afford it.

“It’s one more hit to an industry that has been … significantly hit by the pandemic,” stated Statia Elliot, director of the School of Hospitality Food and Tourism Management at the University of Guelph. Source – cbc.ca

She states that after policymakers were involved in being too slow to execute sterner travel and testing protocols in the early days of the pandemic, they are destroying by doing the different now and moving quickly.

A glance at the numbers shows how stark the result of COVID-19 has been on travel. In October of 2019, ere the pandemic, almost a quarter of a million people arrived in Vancouver’s airport from nations that were not the U.S.