The Canadian-US border has been closed since March 2020, and now the land and sea border will be welcoming, and open to fully vaccinated Canadians.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was declared that closing the Canadian and American borders would be the smartest plan to combat the spread of COVID-19 in both countries. Since then, many places across the US and Canada have been hit hard with urgent care patients and numerous amounts of COVID positive cases.

Now, almost 2 years later, the United States has declared it safe to reopen the border to fully vaccinated Canadians starting November 8th. This means that ‘snow birds’ who drive down to the south like Florida for the cold Canadian winter months can finally start doing that again.

The rules behind the eligibility of getting into the United States are as followed. If you are fully vaccinated you can enter the country by land or sea without a negative PCR test. If travelling by air, going to the US or Canada needs a negative PCR test. If you have mixed doses many countries accept these second doses, but for right now America does not.

The controversy behind all of this is that Canada is still under strict prevention, with limited capacity in restaurants and venues, the requirement of masks and much more, yet the Canadian border has been open to US citizens since August 9th. For America, many states have been fully open for almost a year, including not requiring a mask yet Canadian have not been allowed to travel by sea or land for almost 2 years.

Having our borders back open seems like a plan that both countries needed to go ahead with, but with COVID still very much around and many cities still facing these challenging times, is it right to have our borders open yet?

Article published by HOLR magazine