WASHINGTON • President Joe Biden will reimpose a Covid-19 travel ban on most non-US citizens who have been in Britain, Brazil, Ireland and much of Europe, a White House official has said, as the new administration ramps up its pandemic response.

Yesterday, Mr Biden also extended the ban to travellers who have recently been to South Africa amid warnings that new, more transmissible virus variants are already establishing themselves in the United States, the official said.

The new President last week tightened mask wearing rules and ordered quarantine for people flying into the US, as he seeks to tackle the country's worsening coronavirus crisis.

Mr Biden has said that the Covid-19 death toll would likely rise from 420,000 to half a million next month, and that drastic action was needed.

"We're in a national emergency. It's time we treated it like one," he said last Thursday.

In his last days as president, Mr Donald Trump announced that a Covid-19 ban on travellers arriving from much of Europe and Brazil would be lifted, but the Biden administration immediately said it would reverse the order, which was due to come into effect today.

Mr Trump had announced an initial ban on Jan 31 last year on non-American travellers entering from China to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The ban was extended to European countries on March 14 as the pandemic entered full force.

More than 25 million Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the US since the pandemic began, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally on Sunday. The milestone was reached only five days after the world's wealthiest and hardest-hit nation recorded 400,000 deaths from the disease.

Mr Biden has made fighting the pandemic a priority and is pushing for Congress to approve a US$1.9 trillion (S$2.5 trillion) relief package that would include billions of dollars to boost vaccination rates.

The President, who was inaugurated last Wednesday, has said he wants 100 million people vaccinated within his first 100 days in office, and has called for Americans to wear masks for 100 days.

The latest moves come just days after Dr Anthony Fauci, the government's leading infectious disease specialist, told reporters at the White House that the South Africa variant was being followed very carefully because it appeared to be more contagious and might be somewhat less responsive to the vaccines in use today.

Mr Biden's travel ban on South Africa will take effect on Saturday and apply to non-US citizens who have spent time in the country in the last 14 days. It will not affect US citizens or permanent residents.

Mr Trump sought on his last full day in office to eliminate the Covid-19-related ban on travel from Europe and Brazil, saying it was no longer necessary.

Ms Jen Psaki, now the White House press secretary, said at the time that ending the ban was the wrong thing to do, and indicated that Mr Biden would not allow that to happen.

Recently, the health authorities announced that a case of the so-called South African variant had been recorded in New Zealand in a returned traveller who had been released from hotel quarantine after twice testing negative. More than two dozen countries have now reported cases of the variant.

In addition to the travel bans, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has already said that everyone above two years old will be required to present a negative coronavirus test taken within three days of attempting to travel into the US.

A White House official on Sunday said the CDC will not issue waivers from that policy as some airlines had requested.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS, NYTIMES