While the US continues its vaccination campaign as part of the fight against Covid, it has relaxed travel restrictions for many countries.
The public health agency updated its criteria on Monday, removing 61 countries from Level 4, which includes “high risk” countries with the advice to “avoid all travel”.
Countries such as Turkey, France, Spain and Italy are now at Level 3, which means that fully vaccinated passengers can travel to these areas.
Most travelers from the UK are still prohibited from traveling to the country. Those traveling from the US to the UK are required to quarantine at home for 10 days.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it has updated its criteria to “better distinguish countries with serious outbreaks from countries with ongoing but controlled Covid-19 spread.”
The CDC also noted that the Level 4 criterion has been changed from 100 cases per 100,000 to 500 cases per 100,000.
The CDC’s manual has 5 levels: “very high” (Level 4), “high” (Level 3), “medium” (Level 2), “low” (Level 1) and “Unknown”.
Some of the other countries that have been lowered into travel alert 3 include:
Ecuador, Philippines, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, Jordan, Denmark, Ukraine, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Poland.
Travel warning to Japan has also been relaxed to allow vaccinated passengers to travel ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in late July.
The CDC also said that travel warnings to more countries are expected to be relaxed in the coming weeks.
An additional 50 countries and territories have been downgraded to “Level 2” or “Level 1”, an agency spokesperson said. These countries include Singapore, Israel, South Korea, Iceland, Belize and Albania.
The US restricts entry to almost all non-citizens who have been to China, the UK, Ireland, India, South Africa, Brazil, Iran, and 26 Schengen countries in Europe in the past 14 days.
Citing a White House official on Tuesday, Reuters reported that the Biden administration has formed expert working groups with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the UK to determine how to safely restart travel after 15 months of epidemic restrictions.