U.S. Lifts Global Level 4 Health Advisory
The U.S. Department of State lifted its Global Level 4 Health Advisory yesterday.
In a statement, the Department said that it made the move in close coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), explaining that the Global Advisory initially put in place on March 19, 2020 advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel due to the global impact of COVID-19.
However, the Department’s statement continued that with health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others, the Department is “returning to our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice (with Levels from 1-4 depending on country-specific conditions), in order to give travellers detailed and actionable information to make informed travel decisions.”
The State Department added: “This will also provide U.S. citizens more detailed information about the current status in each country. We continue to recommend U.S. citizens exercise caution when traveling abroad due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic.”
It pointed out that U.S. citizens considering travelling abroad should review the entire Travel Advisory for their destination(s) on Travel.State.gov.
A full list of recent updates to Travel Advisories can be found at: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories.html/.
The statement continued: “We are closely monitoring health and safety conditions across the globe, working in partnership with the CDC and other agencies. As always, we will regularly update our destination-specific advice to U.S. travellers as conditions evolve.”
It explained that “keeping the American public informed of health and safety conditions around the world is key to our broader mission of ensuring the safety and security of U.S. citizens.”
The Department of State has worked closely with the CDC since the start of the pandemic to align our public messages and travel advice and to keep Americans safe. The Department’s COVID-19 Travel Advisories are informed by CDC’s expert judgement of the health situation as well as other factors related to travel, infrastructure, healthcare resources, and potential closures and restrictions in the country which are important for U.S. citizens to consider.
And it said that it encourages U.S. citizens to stay connected with the Department via Travel.state.gov and through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/travelgov/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/TravelGov), and to enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (https://step.state.gov/) to receive timely Alerts about evolving health and safety conditions in their planned destinations.
