Foreign holidays for Americans appear to be off the cards this summer
The US has banned Americans from traveling to the UK due to ‘very high levels of Covid’ on the British Isles. The State Department placed the UK on its ‘do not travel’ list, the highest of all travel warnings for American citizens this week along with 130 other countries. The UK had spent the last year of the pandemic on the US’s ‘reconsider travel’ list, level three, but has been elevated to the top level four tier despite Britain’s successful vaccine rollout. The move has cast doubt over the resumption of transatlantic travel, which ground to a halt last March and has stood at a standstill for months on end. Since March 16, 2020, Brits have not been allowed to travel to the US from the UK unless they are a US citizens, a resident or a citizen’s close family member. A presidential proclamation introduced by Trump last spring and renewed by President Joe Biden in January that blocks almost travelers from the UK and Europe from entering the US remains in place.
Now, under the new US government rules, travel from both sides of the Atlantic is off the cards for the time being. According to the Telegraph, the UK’s reclassification by the US government is not due to a change in the health situation in each country, but ‘to rely more on the CDC’s existing epidemiological assessments’. Also at level four is France, Germany, Canada and Israel, the country with the highest vaccine rates in the world. China, Japan and New Zealand, meanwhile, have stayed on the US’s ‘reconsider travel’ list. The UK has offered a first jab to around 49% of the population, with the US nearing 40%. It’s hoped that as the vaccine program progress in both countries over the coming weeks, travel between the US and UK will be able to resume.