Due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases globally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday advised against travel to 22 nations and territories. Some of these countries included Israel, Australia, Egypt, Albania, Argentina and Uruguay.
Furthermore, a number of countries including Panama, Qatar, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Suriname, Saint Lucia and Bolivia have been elevated to their “Level Four: Very High” recommendation advising Americans to avoid travel to these countries.
The countries recently added to the highest tier now accompany a total of just over 100 countries and territories at “Level Four” while another 20 countries were elevated to “Level Three: High”. A few of the new countries elevated to Level Three include Uganda, Kuwait, Jamaica, Costa Rica and Cuba, where the CDC recommends that unvaccinated Americans avoid nonessential travel to those destinations.
This news comes just as the scheduled rollout of free COVID-19 tests becomes available through a form posted by the U.S. Postal Service. Per the website, every household is eligible to order four rapid antigen COVID-19 tests for free and should be in receipt of these tests in late January/early February.
In the United States, over 209 million people (63% of the population) are fully vaccinated and 81 million people (38.7% of the population( have received a booster dose. This makes the United States the 14th highest share of people vaccinated against COVID-19 with the United Arab Emirates at the top spot followed by Portugal then Cuba and Chile.
To date, there have been a total of 336,028,920 COVID-19 cases reported globally and 5,576,231 deaths. Just over 60% of the world population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine with almost 10 billion doses being administered globally.