U.S. rescinds global ‘do not travel’ warning

NEW YORK — The Trump administration on Thursday rescinded its warnings to Americans against all international travel because of the coronavirus pandemic, saying conditions no longer warrant a blanket worldwide alert.

The State Department lifted its level-four health advisory for the entire world in order to return to country-specific warnings. That move came shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its COVID-19 travel advisory information. The CDC lifted “do not travel” warnings for about 20 locations but advised staying away from the vast majority of the world.

“With health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others, the department is returning to our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice in order to give travelers detailed and actionable information to make informed travel decisions,” the State Department said in a statement.

The State Department invoked the blanket warning against all international travel March 19 as the pandemic spread. The revised country-specific travel advice is available at travel.state. gov. However, Americans still face travel restrictions across the world because of the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.

Earlier Thursday, the CDC revised its travel guidance, saying the changes were driven by how the virus was spreading in different places and how well the public health and health care systems were functioning in dealing with new cases.

Seven places, including Thailand, Fiji and New Zealand, are in a low-risk group, according to the CDC. For more than a dozen other locations, it had no precautions. Taiwan, Greenland and Laos are on that list.