The CDC recently outlined their plans to revise its travel recommendations, stating that it would reserve Level 4 travel health notices “for special circumstances, such as rapidly escalating case trajectory or extremely high case counts”.
The countries and other regions which have dropped to “Level 3: High,” still discourages travel for unvaccinated Americans, including the UK, France, Israel, Turkey, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong (China), Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Spain, and Russia.
Other nations also being lowered are Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Central African Republic, Chile, the Czech Republic, Jordan, Lebanon, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Somalia, Uruguay, and Vietnam.
The CDC currently lists no countries at “Level 4”, with this level being renamed “Special Circumstances/Do Not Travel”.
The move comes following numerous US airlines and other travel groups pressing the Biden administration to lift the pre-departure COVID-19 negative test requirements placed on international travelers, as many other countries have already done. They also argued the “Do Not Travel” advisories were unnecessary and discouraged travel.