The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) has praised a push by a bipartisan group of 16 members of Congress to exempt vaccinated travelers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) inbound testing order.

The restriction, which has been in place since January, was first introduced in response to the Omicron variant. However, the members have since wrote a letter to US president Joe Biden urging him to scrap the testing order.

Eben Peck, ASTA’s executive vice president for advocacy, commended signatories to the letter for recognising the CDC’s pre-departure testing rule as the "single biggest barrier" to the full recovery of the country’s international travel system.

"Making the commonsense change these legislators are calling for is widely supported by stakeholders throughout the industry and would match changes our main outbound markets have recently made, including the UK, EU, Canada and Australia," Peck added.

"It would also supercharge the recovery of the travel agency business, as some of the the more than 215 million Americans who have been putting off international travel because of this rule call their travel advisor and get ready to go."