Federal employees that have received the full course of a COVID-19 vaccine and have completed the two-week efficacy period can now travel for personal and professional reasons without going through self-quarantine and testing before returning to work, according to guidance issued Jun 24 by the White House COVID-19 Response Team.
According to the guidance, there is no governmentwide restriction on official travel for fully vaccinated feds, though agency policy and collective bargaining agreements may place individual restrictions on official travel.
Non-vaccinated feds may still be asked to go on official travel, but only for mission-critical trips, whereas vaccinated employees may go on non-mission-critical trips.
For domestic travel, this means feds may go anywhere without needing to take testing and quarantine measures, though the government still recommends wearing masks on public transportation and in indoor transportation hubs.
For international travel, the U.S. still requires any incoming passenger, including federal employees, to provide a negative COVID-19 test result within three days of their flight’s departure to the U.S. Feds will also have to adhere to any testing requirements put in place by their destination country.
Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.
