I am speechless … Yesterday, only after I passed the border control at ORD and was waiting for my luggage, I realized that I was not sent through the health check, and I didn’t fill in the form with my phone and email address. The CDC does not trace returning international passengers anymore. While I was standing at the carousel, a lady in the airport service uniform handed me a card, which advised me to exercise normal caution. There was no public announcement about these changes, so I went to the us.gov website to check. It turned out – yes, the quarantine is not required “unless you participated in high-risk activities.”
Then I want to check what else has changed.
And guess what I found! All the Schengen countries are still on the list, meaning you can’t enter the US unless you have family or other compelling reasons to be here. The list includes (and mind you, the list was updated in September!) China, UK, and Ireland, all Schengen zone and Brazil. Period. Russia is still not on the list, but Finland is. Argentina and Columbia are not,
Oh, and funny thing. Last time, nobody asked me what I am bringing; the only important thing was temperature control. This time, both border control and customs asked me in detail, what I was doing in Finland, why I was in Finland, what I am bringing back, whether I have any food except for chocolate, and the total value of the clothes I brought back. When I told Anna, she asked whether they believed me :).
Hettie's Reflections 
No health checks at all? That seems like a huge oversight given what’s going on in the US right now.
Glad you made it home safely, though. 🙂
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Actually precisely because the US rates are so high, trying to check the temperature of everybody who is arriving from much safer territories is completely useless. A waste of taxpayer’s money. If the big rich USA would administer free COVID tests to all incoming travelers, that would make sense. But apparently, we do not have the same resources as small socialist Finland has 🙂
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