At a meeting of the US Travel and Tourism Advisory Board (TTAB) yesterday, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said that the Biden administration doesn't plan to relax US travel restrictions immediately because of the threat posed around the world by the Delta variant of COVID-19...but the US is developing a "new system for international travel" possibly based on vaccine mandates and contract tracing.

At the same meeting, US Commerce Secretary (and former RI Governor) Gina Raimondo said the administration wants to move to a "metrics-based" system of travel restrictions, but only after getting "everyone" in the US vaccinated. It's unclear what metrics would be used.

Currently the US bars from entry for nonessential travel most non-citizens who have been in the past 14 days in the UK, Ireland, the Schengen Zone of Europe, China, India, South Africa, Iran or Brazil. US land borders with Canada and Mexico are also closed to nonessential inbound travel.

The US Travel Association (USTA) estimates that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US has lost $500B in travel spend and $1.1 trillion in economic output