COVID-19: Countries the CDC Doesn’t Want You to Visit

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 12, 10:30AM EDT

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COVID-19: Countries the CDC Doesn’t Want You to Visit — © saiko3p / iStock via Getty Images

The emergence of the Delta variant of COVID-19 has thrown American rules for contact between people into chaos. Some states have “no mask mandates,” though school systems have mandated masks. People, even those who are vaccinated, have started to wear masks indoors. States with low vaccination rates are posting phenomenal increases in numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the disease. In fact, the increase in daily cases nationwide is the highest since the deadly third wave at the start of the year.

Despite cautions, Americans have started to travel again. Air travel hit year-high levels around Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. They are expected to reach another peak over Labor Day. However, many people have become warier about air travel in the past week. Southwest Airlines just announced a drop in bookings and said it may lose money because of the trend.

While travel in America has become riskier, some nations have much lower vaccination rates. In some African nations, the number is below 5%. Even in highly developed nations, the numbers can be relatively low. The vaccination rates in Japan and South Korea are 31%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a list of nations based on COVID-19 infection rates as a resource for American travelers. The risk levels are broken into four levels: low risk, moderate risk, high risk and very high risk. The information is contained in a document called “COVID-19 Travel Recommendations by Destination.”
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Level 4 carries this warning: “Avoid travel to these destinations. If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel.”

Most of the nations on the Level 4 list are in Africa and South America. However, several nations in Europe that are major tourist destinations for Americans are also included. Among them are France, Ireland and Spain.

Here are the nations the CDC doesn’t want you to visit:

Andorra
Argentina
Aruba
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Botswana
Brazil
British Virgin Islands
Burma (Myanmar)
Burundi
Central African Republic
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Curaçao
Cyprus
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Eswatini
Fiji
France
French Guiana
French Polynesia
Georgia
Gibraltar
Greece
Guadeloupe
Guinea-Bissau
Iceland
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Isle of Man
Israel
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
Lesotho
Libya
Madagascar
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta
Martinique
Mongolia
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands, The
Nicaragua
Oman
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Portugal
Réunion
Rwanda
Saint Barthelemy
Saint Martin
Saudi Arabia
Seychelles
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain
Suriname
Thailand
Tunisia
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Virgin Islands, U.S.
Zimbabwe

Click here to see which 25 countries make up almost all US tourism.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.