On the heels of today’s announcement the U.S. is reopening its land borders to fully vaccinated travellers on November 8th, the definition of full vaccination has just been broadened to include two different types of COVID-19 vaccines.
People with “any combination” of two doses of a vaccine approved by either the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the World Health Organization “are considered fully vaccinated,” the agency said in a statement.
“While CDC has not recommended mixing types of vaccine in a primary series, we recognize that this is increasingly common in other countries so should be accepted for the interpretation of vaccine records.”
The news also confirms what the White House indicated earlier would be a likely development: that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, approved by the WHO but not the FDA, would be deemed acceptable.
The CDC had already given the green light to overseas travellers who received the AstraZeneca vaccine, but until Friday had not expressly confirmed the same policy for those crossing into the U.S. by land.
This comes as great news for the millions of Canadians vaccinated with AstraZeneca and an mRNA vaccine who will shortly be free to travel to the U.S.
