India continues to be on ‘do not travel’ list

WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday lifted a “Do Not Travel” Global Health Advisory for Americans but retained it for India saying that not only does the risk of contracting Covid-19 remain high there but, most alarmingly, “if you get sick in India and need medical care, resources may be limited (and overwhelmed)”.

The state department announced the lifting of the global travel advisory for Americans saying in a statement “with health and safety conditions improving in some countries and potentially deteriorating in others” it was switching back to “our previous system of country-specific levels of travel advice (with Levels from 1-4 depending on country-specific conditions).”

For India, the country-specific advisory was “Level 4: Do Not Travel”. The state department said in the updated advisory, “Do not travel to India due to COVID-19.”

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which guided the state department revision, said on its own updated travel webpage Americans should avoid “all non-essential travel” to India as the risk of contracting Covid-19 is “high” and, it added, most significantly “if you get sick in India and need medical care, resources may be limited.”

In an interactive cartographic representation of its assessment on the pandemic, the CDC framed its India warning a little differently: “If you get sick in India and need medical care, healthcare resources may be overwhelmed.”

But this advisory can change. “CDC continues to monitor every country in the world, and as they identify that a country is either improving or that a country may be going in the other direction, they will let us know and we will, in turn, make the adjustment,” Karin King, deputy assistant secretary for overseas citizen services, told reporters at a news briefing.

Of the over 19 million Covid-19 infections worldwide, nearly a fifth — close to 4.9 million — are in the US, followed by Brazil with 2.9 and India with 1.9 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.

India is resuming limited international travel through bilateral arrangements with other countries under a new set of guidelines that go into effect Saturday, specifying a sevenday institutional isolation followed by another seven days of home isolation.

There was no comment from the ministry of external affairs on the US decision.

The Donald Trump administration issued a travel advisory on March 19 asking Americans to avoid all international travel.

It had begun banning incoming travellers from certain countries in January starting with China, where the epidemic had started.