What Fully Vaccinated Travelers Need To Know Before Planning A Trip

As coronavirus vaccinations ramp up in the United States, many grounded travelers are likely looking forward to planning their first fully vaccinated getaway—perhaps booking a long-awaited flight to visit family they haven't seen since last year.

And while there is good reason to celebrate inoculation, health officials have warned that a vaccination is not a free pass to travel as we used to. This is largely dictated by the undetermined degree to which vaccinated people can transmit coronavirus; until everyone is inoculated against COVID-19 or it is proven that vaccination prevents transmission, vaccinated people will need to continue masking and social distancing to protect those who are unvaccinated.

But while post-vaccine travel isn't without some risks, some activities—including being able to more confidently fly, returning to places lifting restrictions for vaccinated individuals, and gathering with other vaccinated people—do become safer, experts say.

"It's not appropriate to tell people that they should do exactly the same thing after vaccination that they did before being vaccinated, and it's also not true," says Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University. "People are not going to want to be vaccinated if they think that they can't do anything different [after]," and the efficacy of COVID vaccines depends on widespread participation.

"I booked my first air ticket in a year and I'm happy to fly, masked," says David Freedman, a vaccinated infectious-disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who has studied in-flight transmission of the coronavirus. "The vaccines are excellent … and while a small percentage [of vaccinated people] are still going to get COVID, you probably won't end up in the hospital, or anything like that."

Here's what doctors say travelers need to know before booking their first post-COVID trip.