(LifeSiteNews) — Stanford University professor of medicine and Great Barrington Declaration signer Dr. Jay Bhattacharya issued a call Monday for an immediate end to ongoing COVID vaccine travel mandates for foreigners entering the United States.
The call comes after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week released new guidelines broadly eliminating the differentiations between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
“We had this advisory turned into essentially a law that said you couldn’t come into the United States if you were an unvaccinated foreigner,” Dr. Bhattacharya told “Fox & Friends First” co-host Carley Shimkus on Monday.
“Many, many people have relatives abroad who couldn’t come into the U.S., who’ve been separated from their family because of this guidance,” he said.
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The Stanford professor said that in light of the new CDC guidance acknowledging that unvaccinated individuals likely have some immunity to the coronavirus via prior infection, “what needs to happen is every single one of these policies that discriminates against the unvaccinated needs to change. It needs to change immediately.”
He also explicitly called for unvaccinated Serbian tennis superstar Novak Djokovic to be permitted to play in the U.S. Open after he was denied participation for refusing to get the COVID jab.
The organizers of the 2022 U.S. Open tennis championships confirmed last month that they would not allow Djokovic to compete due to “the U.S. government’s position regarding travel into the country for unvaccinated non-U.S. citizens.”
According to Bhattacharya, the CDC had “encouraged discrimination against unvaccinated people and companies just responded” by enacting jab mandates.
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With this new guidance, the @CDCgov has taken a substantive step toward ending lockdown-by-stealth, dismantling vax segregation & discrimination, and eliminating unnecessary disruptions in the lives of kids this school year. Good job, @CDCDirector! https://t.co/mEBQFVH75v
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) August 11, 2022
The comments from the Stanford doctor come after the CDC issued revised COVID-19 guidance loosening coronavirus restrictions on Tuesday.
NPR pointed out that the new CDC guidance “brings the recommendations for unvaccinated people in line with people who are fully vaccinated – an acknowledgment of the high levels of population immunity in the U.S., due to vaccination, past COVID-19 infections or both.”
“Based on the latest … data, it’s around 95% of the population,” the CDC’s Greta Massetti said in a statement, according to NPR.
“And so it really makes the most sense to not differentiate,” she said.
Massetti’s remarks and the new COVID-19 guidance from the CDC come after public health officials strongly pushed for COVID jab uptake and initially claimed the injections would stop the spread of the virus, a claim that officials have since admitted has not been borne out.
In July 2021, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky had expressed approval of COVID vaccine passports, and said that forcing Americans to show proof of having received a COVID-19 shot to engage in ordinary life “may very well be the path forward.”
By March 2022, however, with reported vaccine efficacy falling, Walensky admitted that “perhaps” the CDC had exercised “too little caution and too much optimism” regarding the experimental jabs.
Meanwhile, Bhattacharya is not alone in advocating for the immediate rollback of the CDC jab mandate for travelers from foreign countries.
Earlier this month, eight Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on the Biden administration to end the “unnecessary” and “coercive” COVID-19 vaccine requirement for foreign visitors to the United States.
In a letter signed by Reps. Louie Gohmert, Mary Miller, Ralph Norman, Thomas Massie, Randy Weber, Brian Mast, Billy Long, and Andy Biggs,” the lawmakers pointed out that since “this past May, at least 55 nations had no Covid-19 entry requirements.”
“In maintaining societies open to lawful commerce and travel, these nations affirmed that Covid-19 is not a legitimate reason to arbitrarily shut down healthy, constructive interactions among the human race,” they wrote.
“By failing to similarly affirm this reality, your administration is coercively forcing noncitizens to choose between their own bodily autonomy and pursuing their lawful interests,” they said.