The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans about traveling to 15 new destinations on Monday as these locations were moved to their highest-risk travel category as their COVID situations worsened due to a spike in virus cases.

The 15 places include Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Kuwait, Mongolia, Niger, Peru, Romania, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

These locations were placed on the CDC’s Level 4 or “very high” risk category, where 500 COVID cases per 100,000 residents were reported in the past 28 days. The CDC has warned even fully vaccinated American travelers to avoid Level 4 destinations, saying that there is a “risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants.”

The majority of the destinations moved to Level 4 were listed as Level 3 or “high” risk last week, with only Niger previously sitting on the CDC’s Level 1 “low” risk category previously, CNN reported.

Last week, 22 locations were added to the CDC’s Level 4 category, including Australia, the Bahamas, Israel, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Egypt, and Panama.

Currently, there are almost 120 destinations listed on the Level 4 category, including cruise travel and most of Europe.

The CDC also made updates to its Level 3 “high” risk category, moving 10 destinations to the list. The additions include Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, India, Japan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, the Republic of the Congo, and Senegal.

A Level 3 destination is determined by the CDC when it has between 100 and 500 COVID cases per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days.

Equatorial Guinea, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, and Senegal all saw their COVID situation worsen as they had previously been on the Level 1 “low” risk category, while the remaining six locations were listed in the Level 2 “moderate” category.

Two updates were made by the CDC to the Level 2 “moderate” risk travel category with the addition of Bangladesh and Brunei. Bangladesh was previously listed as Level 1 “low” risk, and Brunei’s COVID situation was “unknown” last week as there was no reliable information about its virus cases.

A Level 2 location has between 50 to 99 virus cases per 100,000 reported in the past 28 days.

No new updates were made to the CDC’s Level 1 “low” category on Monday, which currently only carries about a dozen places, including China.

The “unknown” category also saw no changes on Monday.

The Dominican Republic is reliant on tourism and arrivals have recovered to about 80 percent of pre-pandemic numbers
The Dominican Republic is reliant on tourism and arrivals have recovered to about 80 percent of pre-pandemic numbers AFP / Daniel SLIM
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