Airports and roads may be jam-packed for the Thanksgiving holiday as AAA predicts about 53 million people will travel this year.
This forecast represents an increase of 13% from 2020.
With 6.4 million more people traveling this Thanksgiving coupled with the recent opening of the U.S. borders to fully vaccinated international travelers—people should prepare for airports to be noticeably more crowded.
As travel restrictions continue to lift and consumer confidence builds, AAA urges travelers to be proactive when making their plans this holiday season.

A team of technical officers in the National Public Health Laboratory has been building extra capacity in South Sudan to control yellow fever outbreaks, reported the WHO Africa.
Strengthening national capacities for case detection, investigation, and testing is critical for effective yellow fever control.
This effort is essential since South Sudan lies in the yellow fever belt and has reported 187 cases, including 27 deaths in three separate outbreaks in 2003, 2018, and 2020.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) determined that Covaxin (manufactured by Bharat Biotech, India) and BBIBP-CorV (manufactured by Sinopharm, China) vaccines would be 'recognized' to establish a traveler’s vaccination status. 
This recognition announced on November 1, 2021, is for travelers aged 12 and over who have been vaccinated with Covaxin and those 18 to 60 who have been immunized with BBIBP-CorV.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on October 30, 2021, that non-citizen travelers who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and have appropriate documentation will be permitted to enter the United States via land ports of entry (POE) and ferry terminals starting on November 8, 2021. 
This shift eases long-standing restrictions on non-essential travel, consistent with public health guidance.
To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the U.S. government implemented temporary travel restrictions on March 20, 2020.

In early October 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed the first-ever vaccine against malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of an infective female Anopheles mosquito.
This achievement is the product of 30 years of research and development. 
It is the first against malaria, and the first for any human parasitic disease stated an article recently published by Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
This WHO endorsement was important since malaria is a significant cause of illness and death in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The U.S. government recently announced that proof of COVID-19 vaccinations is required for international travelers arriving into the United States.
This requirement has an effective date of November 8, 2021. 
For purposes of entry into the United States, COVID-19 vaccines accepted will include U.S. FDA Approved or Authorized as well as WHO Emergency Use Listing COVID vaccines, said the U.S. CDC on October 20, 2021.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today it is recommending widespread use of GSK’s Mosquirix RTS,S/AS01 (RTS,S) malaria vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions with moderate to high P. falciparum malaria transmission. 
The WHO recommendation is based on results from an ongoing pilot program in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi that has reached more than 800,000 children since 2019.
To date, more than 2.3 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in African countries.

Vaccination certificates are nothing new. For many years, various countries required visitors to show proof they had been vaccinated against yellow fever.
Traditionally, yellow fever paper certificates included details such as the date, product, and batch number of the Stamaril or YF-VAX vaccine administered.
However, these paper vaccination certificates were generally fake.  

The Ebola outbreak that emerged in Guinea in February 2021 has been declared over by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa.
A total of 16 confirmed and seven probable cases were reported in Guinea’s latest outbreak. Eleven patients survived, and 12 lives were lost.
Guinean health authorities declared this Ebola outbreak in February 2021 after three cases were detected in the southern N’zerekore prefecture. This is the same region where the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak emerged before spreading into neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The 28th meeting of the Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations on the international spread of poliovirus reviewed updated data on wild poliovirus (WPV1) and circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV) on May 4, 2021.
On May 21, 2021, this World Health Organization (WHO) Committee announced it unanimously agrees that the risk of international spread of poliovirus remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and recommended the extension of Temporary Recommendations for an additional three months.