Over 740K Canadians flew internationally in December, despite federal advice to avoid non-essential travel

Knowledge collected by the Canada Border Services Agency on worldwide travellers getting into Canada reveals that a lot of folks appeared to not let the Omicron variant cease their vacation journey plans.

To recap, Canada’s borders have been open to completely vaccinated non-resident travellers at 18 airports in December and the land border was open to completely vaccinated Canadian travellers in November.

However by late November, the World Well being Group mentioned that Omicron was a brand new variant of concern and on Dec. 15 the Authorities of Canada suggested that every one Canadians keep away from non-essential journey exterior the nation.

By Dec. 21, a detrimental molecular take a look at was required for all travellers to enter Canada.

Returning dwelling by land, air, or water? All travellers should submit their necessary data in #ArriveCAN earlier than arriving in Canada. https://t.co/0e5GlOh43w pic.twitter.com/Yo58ZbFwl2

— Canada Border Companies Company (@CanBorder) January 6, 2022

Air journey

In line with Statistics Canada, 742,400 Canadians flew again into the nation from overseas throughout December 2021 – eight instances better than the 93,800 travellers recorded throughout the identical month in 2020.

The variety of travellers was nonetheless two-thirds lower than what was recorded in December 2019.

Nonetheless, greater than 10 instances as many non-residents arrived at Canadian airports throughout December (352,900), up from the 32,500 recorded throughout the identical month in 2020 however, once more, nonetheless two-thirds lower than what was recorded in 2019.

“A few of the December 2021 enhance comes from the inclusion of worldwide arrivals at Toronto Pearson Worldwide Airport Terminal 1, the place the (Main Inspection Kiosk) system was totally applied as of June 22, 2021,” explains the Statistic Canada web page.

Land journey

In line with the info, US residents made 291,600 journeys into Canada by way of 111 land ports.

This was greater than 5 instances the quantity of journeys revamped the land border in 2020 however lower than one-third of the 977,200 journeys made in December 2019.

Canadians made 608,900 journeys from the US in December which is about 4 instances the quantity in 2020 however nonetheless considerably lower than the 1.9 million recorded in the identical month of 2019.

In line with the report, as soon as the requirement for a detrimental molecular take a look at got here into impact, the variety of Canadians making journeys into the US dropped by about greater than half throughout the first 20 days of December.

That works out to about 10,600 land journeys.

As of Saturday, Jan. 22, all non-US people trying to enter the US by way of land ports are required to be totally vaccinated and supply associated proof of vaccination.