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The United States is flinging its doors wide open to vaccinated international travelers on Monday, welcoming many visitors who've been shut out of the country for 20 months. Anna Zwing, 28, is flying from Germany to Chicago on Monday to see her boyfriend for the first time in more than two years. She checked in for her Lufthansa flight in person in Frankfurt on Sunday to make sure her ESTA application and all the new Covid documentation she has vigilantly gathered and double- and triple-checked was in order. All set, the check-in agent assured Zwing and told her to prepare for longer wait times at security on Monday. (Hunter, 11/8)

The U.S. lifted restrictions Monday on travel from a long list of countries including Mexico, Canada and most of Europe, setting the stage for emotional reunions nearly two years in the making and providing a boost for the airline and tourism industries decimated by the pandemic. Wives will hug husbands for the first time in months. Grandmas will coo over grandsons who have doubled in age since they last saw them. Aunts and uncles and cousins will snuggle babies they haven’t met yet. (Leicester and Loller, 11/8)

More than a year and a half after COVID-19 concerns prompted the U.S. to close its borders to international travelers from countries including Brazil, China, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom and much of Europe, restrictions are shifting to focus on vaccine status. Beginning Monday, bans on travel from specific countries are over. The U.S. will allow in international travelers, but they must be vaccinated — with a few exceptions. (Arbel, 11/8)

Asked if the resumption of international travel will feed into the delta variant wave of COVID-19 infections the U.S. is experiencing, Gottlieb told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he does not think the new policy will have a significant effect on cases in the U.S. because of the vaccine requirement and individuals not wanting to be trapped in a foreign country with the virus. “I don't think the travel coming in from outside the U.S. is gonna feed additional infections or a lot of additional infections,” Gottlieb said. (Schnell, 11/7)

As COVID-19 ravaged Hungary in April, Budapest resident Akos Sipos received his second vaccine dose, believing he was doing the right thing for his own health and to help end the pandemic. But Sipos, 46, soon discovered that the vaccine he received, Russia's Sputnik V, disqualified him from traveling to a number of other countries where it hadn't been approved. The nations include the United States, which is pushing forward with a new air travel policy that will make Sipos and many like him ineligible to enter. (Spike, 11/7)