International Travel Becomes Safer For Americans As COVID Cases Start To Slow

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has some positive news for American travelers looking to travel abroad. The agency made no new updates to its “very high” COVID risk category for travel on Monday.

This was a first for the CDC in months as the Level 4 category has been ballooning in recent weeks, hitting an all-time high with more than 140 locations on the list in February.

Now it seems that COVID cases are slowing in many parts of the world – an encouraging sign for tourists looking to travel internationally without the fear of contracting COVID-19.

A destination in the CDC’s Level 4 “very high” risk category has more than 500 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents reported in the past 28 days. The CDC warns that, regardless of vaccination status, traveling to these locations may put you “at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19.”

Last week, only one nation was added to the Level 4 category with the inclusion of the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar.

To date, there are about 115 places listed in the Level 4 category, which is almost half of the nearly 240 locations that the CDC monitors for COVID cases. Destinations on the Level 4 warning list include tourist hotspots such as the Caribbean, much of Europe, Brazil, and Canada.

Another positive sign this week was that several locations that were moved down by the CDC from Level 4 to the Level 3 “high” risk category. This included the destinations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Equador, Kosovo, Peru, Qatar and Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

The CDC deems a Level 3 nation as one that has between 100 and 500 cases of the virus per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days.

Updates were also made to the Level 2 “moderate” risk category as six destinations dropped from the Level 3 category into the lower-risk spot. They were the nations of the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Malawi, the Philippines and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

A Level 2 location has between 50 and 99 cases of the virus per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days, the CDC said.

Cruise ship travel is listed as a Level 2 risk, moving into the category recently after sitting at Level 4 “very high” risk for several months.

Four nations were updated to the Level 1 “low” risk category by the CDC, including Chad, Guinea, India and Namibia. These destinations were all previously listed in higher categories, and all saw their COVID case count improve in the last week.

No new additions were made to the CDC’s “unknown” risk category on Monday, which lists nations that have unreliable information available about their COVID situations.