--- title: My Family Wants to Visit This Summer. Is Travel Safe Yet? description: In this COVID Question column, a reader asks if it's safe for her unvaccinated family to fly to visit her and her vaccinated husband. canonical: https://time.com/5954515/summer-travel-covid-vaccination/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-04-14T19:58:35.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:11:15.138Z article:section: Health og:title: My Family Wants to Visit This Summer. Is Travel Safe Yet? og:description: Can unvaccinated people fly? og:url: https://time.com/5954515/summer-travel-covid-vaccination/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb35e67893d9c1289/698a18afb21a9cb74f504b3b/travel-during-covid.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: travel-covid-19-pandemic og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: My Family Wants to Visit This Summer. Is Travel Safe Yet? twitter:description: Can unvaccinated people fly? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb35e67893d9c1289/698a18afb21a9cb74f504b3b/travel-during-covid.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # My Family Wants to Visit This Summer. Is Travel Safe Yet? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=cb30890d-1e9c-4ed0-b7fc-c4e39026f9e9&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Tracking the Vaccine: From Freezer to Front Line [Watch (HLS stream): Tracking the Vaccine: From Freezer to Front Line](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0dwzz5K2.m3u8) (4:28)  _Published 2021-01-20. TIME followed the vaccination process from a Walgreens freezer to a long-term care facility to see what the roll out can look like._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Apr 14, 2021 7:58 PM UTC  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Apr 14, 2021 7:58 PM UTC _Welcome to COVID Questions, TIME’s advice column. We’re trying to make living through the pandemic a little easier, with expert-backed answers to your toughest coronavirus-related dilemmas. While we can’t and don’t offer medical advice—those questions should go to your doctor—we hope this column will help you sort through this stressful and confusing time. Got a question? Write to us at covidquestions@time.com._ Today, anonymous asks: --- > “” --- Navigating our [semi-vaccinated world](https://time.com/5949329/social-lives-covid-19-vaccination/) is full of tough questions like this one. Luckily, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued guidance that may help. [According to the CDC](https://time.com/5945003/cdc-guidelines-vaccinated-people/), fully vaccinated people can visit indoors and unmasked with low-risk unvaccinated people from a single household. [Recent research suggests](https://time.com/5950829/vaccines-covid-19-infection-real-world-study/) getting both doses of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines provides about 90% protection against COVID-19 infections. That means a person fully vaccinated with these shots has a pretty slim chance of infecting an unvaccinated person, or vice versa. But it’s important to read the fine print there. Since no vaccine is 100% perfect, you should only visit with _low-risk_ unvaccinated people—i.e., those who do not have medical conditions or other factors that would increase their chances of having a severe case of COVID-19 if they somehow did get infected. And you should only visit with one household of unvaccinated people at a time; your vaccination status wouldn’t make it any safer for a bunch of unvaccinated people to spend time together inside and unmasked. Let’s assume the family members who want to visit meet both of those standards. Great! But there’s still the question of travel. Right now, the CDC [does not recommend](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-during-covid19.html) non-essential travel for unvaccinated people. Even though airplanes [have pretty good filtration systems](https://time.com/5880231/airlines-covid-19/), travelers encounter lots of other people in fairly tight quarters during the average trip, says Cindy Prins, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida. Each of those interactions raises the chances of COVID-19 exposure. Plus, if your family members were unknowingly infected while traveling, or got infected during the trip, they could potentially seed new cases in your area. Since you and your husband are vaccinated, could you two travel to visit your family instead? That’s a simple question with a complicated answer. Flying would certainly be safer for you and your husband than for your unvaccinated family. Earlier this month, [the CDC said](https://time.com/5952252/covid-19-vaccine-travel/) fully vaccinated people can travel “at low risk to themselves,” and do not need to quarantine or get a negative test before or after a domestic flight. The agency did not, however, give its full stamp of approval for leisure travel. “While we believe fully vaccinated people can travel at low risk to themselves, CDC is not recommending travel at this time due to rising number of cases,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during an April 2 press briefing. That advice may seem contradictory, but the key thing here is balancing individual and collective risk. COVID-19 is still spreading [at concerning rates](https://time.com/5800901/coronavirus-map/) in this country, and the majority of people in the U.S. [are not fully vaccinated](https://time.com/collection/coronavirus-vaccines-updates/). Maintaining pandemic precautions until most people are vaccinated and case counts drop will help keep everyone safe. So, would you and your husband be fine if you flew to see your family? There’s no guarantee, but the science suggests you probably would be. If you do fly, try to avoid crowds in the airport and wear your mask during the whole flight, Prins says. [Recent CDC modeling research](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7016e1.htm?s%5Fcid=mm7016e1%5Fw) also concluded that spacing out airplane passengers can help cut down on exposure to the virus—so if you can sit in an otherwise empty row, all the better. But with all that said, might it be better to wait until more of the U.S. population is vaccinated and case counts are lower? Again, probably yes. “Look at what’s going on in your community and in \[your family’s\] community,” Prins suggests. “Is it a high risk level? Are there a lot of cases? If that’s true, wait until more people get vaccinated and we start to see these case loads come down.” ## Transcript But I am very excited that you finally come up with a vaccine. I feel the weight of it that this is going to do some good for us. And you know that I'm ready for it to start happening. You know, waiting to be in line to get my shot to. Just all the way to the Yankees or. Don't sign for Colbert. So they don't say. I actually. The biggest challenge has been temperature requirements, because that has to be kept at ultracold temperature of negative seven degrees Celsius. Or if we are transporting in a refrigeration, we have a lot more monitoring for that because it's only good for so many hours if the temperature excursion happens. And then there is a lot of responsibility in terms of liability. This vaccine has been very popular, so we have security protocols. We are putting SEALs when they're transporting. We have cameras installed specifically for this over and. Yeah. And be sorry. All right. Keep your arm relaxed. Oh, just the needle all done. You're not even bleeding. So my grandmother actually just passed away, I mean, less than two months ago from it. So to be out here protecting other people's grandparents is really touching me personally. Like, I really appreciate the opportunity and just so happy to be a part of it. The staff members here, we have about 240 that we're doing. We can get through usually with this many immunizations, 40 or 50 an hour at this facility specifically, we have over 100 residents that are all room to room based. So that takes a little more time. And then have you ever had a reaction after receiving a vaccine in the past? I can see how grateful they are. And I'm just grateful and honored to be able to give them the vaccine for me to be able to do it directly. You know, the last patient I just did, she's like, I'm waiting for the vaccine. And I was like, I'm here with the vaccine. And she's like, You're here with the vaccine. So I'm part of the bigger movement of vaccinating basically America. And that's it. Well, that's the easiest one I ever had. I'm glad with hay fever, I was you know, they can't come and visit me and I can't go visit them. But it's. Oh, gosh, it makes me mad anyway. It really is hard. And it's been harder for a lot of other people who have lost folks. And so I haven't had that problem, but it's awful. So I will mask myself any time to prevent that from happening. When I was a kid, everybody knew people who had somebody in their family that had polio. Any vaccine that prevents unnecessary pain and suffering is a good thing to have. All right. I'm just going to sanitize your arm real quick. I am happy that my son sometimes he talks to me on Facebook on face time. This time. And my daughter calls me every night. I know I can touch them and see them, but I just think the time will come. I hope. I hope I'm still alive. 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