Europe reopens to 14 countries, but not US

AMERICA COULD HIT 100,000 CASES A DAY, FAUCI WARNS

The European Continent yesterday reopened to visitors from 14 countries but not the US, where some of the states that pushed hardest and earliest to reopen their economies are now in retreat because of a surge in confirmed coronavirus infections.

The EU extended its ban on visitors not just from the US but from China Russia, Brazil and India where infections are running high.

List of countries

Those on the list are Algeria, Australia, Canada, Japan, Georgia, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.

Britain dropped out of the EU in January and maintains its own rules, requiring arriving travellers to go into 14-day selfquarantine.

Britain reimposed a lockdown in Leicester, a city of 330,000 people that officials said accounted for 10 per cent of all new coronavirus cases in the nation last week. President Donald Trump suspended the entry of most Europeans in March.

The border relaxation, to be reviewed in two weeks and left to member states to implement, is a bid to help rescue the continent’s battered tourism sector.

15m American visitors

American make up a big share of Europe’s tourism industry, and summer is a key period. More than 15 million Americans travel to Europe each year, while some 10 million Europeans head across the Atlantic.

Growing concern

Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, gave the dire warning in a Senate committee hearing yesterday.

“We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around. And so I am very concerned,” Fauci said.

New York expands curbs

New York yesterday doubled to 16 the number of US states whose residents must go into quarantine if they visit, Governor Andrew Cuomo said amid surging infection rates.

Cuomo said visitors from California, Nevada, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee must now quarantine for 14 days if they travel to New York.— Agencies