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- Anthony Fauci said he expects airlines and cruise ships to require passengers get a COVID vaccine.
- Fauci expects many individual businesses will require customers show proof of vaccination.
- Many universities have already started to require students get vaccinated to attend in-person class.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Anthony Fauci said though the US is not requiring everyone get the COVID-19 vaccine, he expects individual businesses will.
Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said he expects businesses like airlines and cruise ships to require customers to show proof of getting a COVID-19 vaccine before coming on-board. Many universities, he added, have already started to require students get vaccinated if they'd like to attend in-person classrooms.
"There are organizations, particularly universities and colleges who are saying, not withstanding what the federal government is requiring, if you want to come into campus and be in in-person learning, you're going to have to show proof of vaccination," Fauci said during the the Bloomberg Businessweek conference on Thursday.
"Cruise ships will likely be doing that. Airlines will likely be doing that. So you're going to have at, a local, independent-level, things that the federal government is not going to be mandating," he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its COVID-19 guidelines for the cruise line industry to allow ship to sail if 98% of crew and 95% of passengers are vaccinated against COVID-19.
Many major cruise lines are planning to resume sailing this summer by departing from international ports instead of US waters due to CDC restrictions, Insider's Brittany Chang reported.
The CDC recently said fully vaccinated people can remove masks in most indoor and outdoor places, but made an exception for health care facilities, public transportation, and airports.
Airlines, many of which lost revenue due to travel restrictions last year, are offering cheap fares to get Americans in the air again. The Transportation Security Administration announced on May 18 it screened more than 1.8 million people at airport security checkpoints, a new record high number of travelers since March 2020.