- The COVID-19 travel restrictions in countries outside the United States vary greatly.
- Some nations allow U.S. travelers who have been vaccinated to visit with few restrictions.
- Other countries have strict guidelines, and some don’t allow travelers from the United States.
In the United States, it sometimes feels like the COVID-19 pandemic is winding down as vaccination rates increase, lockdowns and mask mandates lift, and case rates drop in many areas of the country.
But COVID-19 is still raging in many parts of the world, where large numbers of people remain unvaccinated and new, more transmissible coronavirus variants threaten to upend any progress the global community has made in getting the pandemic under control.
Nonetheless, about 7 in 10 people in the United States say they plan to travel in 2021, but many countries have been sluggish to open their doors to even vaccinated Americans.
Meanwhile, Canada’s border — the largest land border between any two countries in the world — remains closed to U.S. citizens regardless of their vaccination status, a move that has dismayed prominent U.S. officials such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York.
Canada recently extended its border closure until at least July 21, although it is lifting quarantine restrictions for fully vaccinated Canadians seeking to reenter the country as of July 5.
Other countries, such as Bali, have delayed their plans to reopen their borders to foreign tourists due to a recent surge in COVID-19 cases.
“Lifting travel restrictions is made complicated by the fact that globally, countries have varying degrees of immunization and varying epidemics. Summer travel will further cast a spotlight on the growing global inequities when it comes to access to COVID-19 vaccines,” Dr. Thomas Kenyon, MPH, chief health officer of international healthcare organization Project HOPE and the former director of Global Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Healthline.
“If the lifting of travel restrictions to Europe is not handled carefully, for example, unvaccinated travelers will become the trans-Atlantic vector for the continued global spread of COVID-19 and variants,” Kenyon said.
Source: healthline