Canada loosening pandemic travel restrictions

Canada began to lift some coronavirus travel restrictions with the U.S on Monday, allowing some Canadians to forgo quarantine requirements.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that plans to reopen the Canadian border completely are to be announced in the coming weeks, The Associated Press reported.

With the loosened restrictions, Canadian residents who have been fully vaccinated will be able to skip a 14-day quarantine period, and those who take air travel will no longer have to spend three days in a government-approved hotel when reentering the country, according to the AP.

Nonessential trips between the U.S. and Canada, including tourism, are expected to remain restricted until at least July 21.

“We’re very hopeful that we’re going to see new steps on reopening announced in the coming weeks,” Trudeau said at a news conference. “We’re going to make sure that we’re not seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases because nobody wants to go back to further restrictions, after having done so much and sacrificed so much to get to this point.”

He also said that lifting some of the coronavirus restrictions on travel marks a “big step″ toward reopening the border, but that he is hesitant for the country to move too quickly, the AP reported.

“Nobody wants us to move too fast and have to reimpose restrictions as case numbers rise like we’re seeing elsewhere in the world,″ he said. “We need to do this right.”