Ottawa ends international travel advisory

Advisory committee also extends vaccine dose interval

The Government of Canada has quietly lifted its global travel advisory and replaced it with a plea for travellers to be fully vaccinated before embarking.

On Friday, the federal government’s website was changed, removing a global advisory first put in place in March 2020 and now shows advisories for each destination country as it did prior to the pandemic. The site also urges Canadians to avoid all cruise ships for the time being.

This move comes a day following the Trudeau government’s announcement of a Canada-wide “vaccine passport,” an immunization verification system that uses provincially issued enhanced vaccine certificates as proof a traveller has gotten both shots.

Meanwhile, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) on Friday announced it is recommending an increased interval between vaccine doses. To date, the standard wait time between doses has been about four weeks, depending on which vaccine is used. On Friday, NACI increased that interval to eight weeks.

NACI says the increased interval helps to boost the body’s immune response to COVID-19, but does say anyone who received their vaccine doses at a lesser interval still have adequate protection against the novel coronavirus.

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