Despite recent positive news about the development and imminent start of distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, global airline lobbyists continue to stress the importance of a speedy implementation of a harmonized testing protocol as a means to lift national quarantine requirements. However, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) cannot mandate states to adopt identical procedures but only encourage the application of risk assessment to decide what mitigation measures to take. In fact, ICAO’s recently published Testing and Cross-border Risk Management Mitigation Manual makes clear that each country will need to adapt testing protocols based on their individual circumstances and gives guidance on when quarantines might remain appropriate.
Nevertheless, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) welcomed the publication as “encouraging progress” in the effort to reopen travel. The group cited a comment from the WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee chairman, Didier Houssin, who IATA said foresees a role for testing as a means of re-opening international travel without quarantine measures.
“Clearly the use of the tests is certainly now supposed to have a much larger place compared to quarantine, for example, which would certainly facilitate things considering all the efforts which have been made by airlines and by airports,” said Houssin following the WHO Emergency Committee Meeting on October 30.
For his part, IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac said that he sees encouraging signs of progress in terms of his group’s efforts to loosen quarantine requirements. “Momentum is building in support of our call for systematic testing to safely reopen borders without quarantine measures,” he claimed. “ICAO, working with health authorities and industry, has produced a high-level framework. Health authorities are beginning to explore how testing could supersede quarantine to stop the cross-border spread of the virus. Encouraging results from testing pilot programs should now give states the confidence to move forward quickly,”
De Juniac also applauded ICAO’s apparent shift in focus from purely risk elimination to risk mitigation. “Our mindset must be focused on managing the risks of the virus while maintaining the overall well-being of the population,” he said. “That would be a shift from current government policies entirely focused on risk elimination until a vaccine is available and at any cost to people’s lives and livelihoods. Even with recent encouraging news, it will be well into 2021 before we can expect large-scale vaccination. In the meantime, denying people the freedom of mobility will do irreparable damage to jobs and our way of life.”