Things continue to change in regard to the global pandemic.
Indoor mask recommendations are back, mask and vaccination requirements have been seen in select locations around the U.S., and new case numbers have broken records in places like Florida. Now, there is an update on international travel for tourists from the United States.
The European Union recommended that its 27 national reinstate restrictions on tourists from the U.S. due to rising COVID-19 cases in the country, according to NBC News.
The European Council removed the U.S. from a safe list of countries for nonessential travel. This reverses advice said in June, when they recommended lifting the restrictions on U.S. travelers in time for summer tourists. Travelers from the U.S. should expect different travel rules across Europe, even though the guidance is nonbonding.
“Nonessential travel to the E.U. from countries or entities not listed (…) is subject to temporary travel restriction. This is without prejudice to the possibility for member states to lift the temporary restriction on nonessential travel to the E.U. for fully vaccinated travelers.” the council said in a statement, according to NBC News.
The European Union does not have a unified COVID-19 policy for tourism and the individual nations have the authority to decide on keeping their countries open to U.S. tourists or not. Quarantines, further testing requirements, or a total ban on all nonessential travel from the U.S. could all be possible restrictions.
Remember, this recommendation does not apply to Great Britain, as they left the E.U. in 2020 and opened their borders to fully vaccinated U.S. travelers earlier this month.
However, the U.S. does remain on Britain’s “amber” travel list, which means fully vaccinated adults from the U.S. don’t have to self-isolate once they arrive, but a COVID-19 test is required 3 days before arriving in the U.K. and another test is required 2 days after arriving.
The E.U. updates the safe travel list based on criteria relating to COVID-19 infection levels and it’s reviewed every 2 weeks. A country must not have more than 75 new cases per 100,000 people over the last 14 days to remain on the safe travel list.
Last week, the United States averaged over 152,000 new COVID-19 cases a day and the number of hospitalized patients due to the virus was around 85,000. For several days, COVID-19 deaths have been over 1,200 a day, which is 7 times higher than they were in early July.
The United States has not reopened its borders to European Union tourists. Stay tuned to DFB for more updates.
Our trip to florida would of been this Sunday 5th Sept, we reschedule from last Sept, but sadly again corvid has prevented us to travel yet again from uk, instead of losing more money on insurance & already lost our estas money with this been the 2nd Yr traving to get to florida we have decided to wait till 2024 hopefully the madness will be over with by then & we be able to have the magic holiday without restrictions, & social distancing with disney characters & without masks to have a rememberable holiday
Everyone deserves in disney world
The EU watches as we fight about our ‘freedom’ to mask, not mask, vaccinate or not. The EU rightfully came to the conclusion that it’s just not safe to travel to the U.S. because Americans do not take covid seriously and are not being cautious. Maybe not all Americans, but enough to make them institute a travel ban. We canceled our Disney trip scheduled for this month because of the same reasons. Dining indoors or out, it doesn’t matter because Florida is a hotbed of covid and no restrictions. As much as we’d like to think life is back to normal, it very much isn’t.
We were supposed to travel to Orlando today from UK but obviously cancelled. Rescheduled for next May and October.
Had a little bit of Disney on the Disney Magic in July.
Now off to Lanzarote on Sunday.