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Coronavirus

CDC drops all countries from top COVID travel advisory warning

The CDC will label a country as "Level 3" if it has more than 100 new COVID cases per 100,000 people over the last 4 weeks.

April 18, 2022 5:17pm

Updated: April 18, 2022 7:14pm

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday dropped all countries from its top COVID-19 travel advisory category.

About 90 countries were dropped from the "Level 4: Special Circumstances/Do Not Travel" category on Monday after the CDC changed its classification system, The Washington Post reported.

Now, about 120 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Mexico, are classified as "Level 3: COVID-19 High."

The CDC states that "Level 4" notices will be "reserved for special circumstances, such as rapidly escalating case trajectory or extremely high case counts, emergence of a new variant of concern, and healthcare infrastructure collapse."

The CDC will label a country as "Level 3" if it has more than 100 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people over the last 28 days.

The United States would be classified at least at Level 3, as it is currently seeing a rising average of 11 cases per 100,000 people each day, The New York Times reported.

"With this new configuration, travelers will have a more actionable alert for when they should not travel to a certain destination (Level 4), regardless of vaccination status, until we have a clearer understanding of the COVID-19 situation at that destination," the CDC said, according to the Post.

The CDC update comes as a federal judge on Monday struck down President Joe Biden's transportation mask mandate.