Biden would mandate vaccines for domestic flights if recommended by 'experts'

President Joe Biden says that if his team of medical experts advises him to issue a domestic vaccine travel requirement, he will do exactly that, according to The Hill.

Biden’s remarks follow Dr. Anthony Fauci’s statement on MSNBC on Monday, suggesting that the federal government should consider a vaccine requirement for people to fly domestically.

“You've got to ask yourself why it is you're making that requirement,” Fauci told MSNBC. “If you're making a requirement for vaccination for people to get on planes who are coming into the country, that's understandable. You don't want to bring more cases into the country.”

“But if you're talking about requiring vaccination to get on a plane domestically, that is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider,” added Fauci, The Post Millennial reported.

"When you make vaccination a requirement, that's another incentive to get more people vaccinated. If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that's something that seriously should be considered," he said.

Fauci clarified his remarks during an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta later Monday, telling the host that “everything that comes up as a possibility, we put it on the table and we consider it, that does not mean it is likely to happen,” he clarified.

“I doubt if we’re going to see something like that in the reasonably foreseeable future,” he said, adding that “It’s not a question of being in favor of it or not. I’m in favor of what we can do to keep the country safe.”

Following Fauci’s remarks, Biden told reporters while on a walk with his new dog that he was prepared to issue the requirement “when I get a recommendation from the medical team.”

The idea of mandating coronavirus vaccines for domestic travel has been floating around the administration for months, and the emergence of the Omicron variant has prompted renewed calls within the White House whether to impose it, The Hill reported.