The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention redesigned its list of Travel recommendations by destination to move several destinations to its highest advisory level.
In updates published on Tuesday by the CDC, Greece, Ireland, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Iran, Andorra, Cuba, Canada, Gibraltar, Jamaica, Isle of Man, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Libya, Malta, Martinique, Saint Barthelemy and Saint Martin were added to level 4, marking areas with the highest level of coronavirus risk in the world.
If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you're fully vaccinated before travel. The CDC warns above the list of 70 countries.
The advisories are based on a scale of five tiers including low Moderate High Very High and Unknown.
The CDC also advises individuals who are not only unvaccinated and cannot travel to level 3 destinations like Denmark, Canada, Switzerland Thailand, Iceland, France and Morocco.
According to Reuters, the U.S State Department raised alerties to Level 4 for locations including the French West Indies, the Marshall Islands, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Greece and Curacao
These updates come as the U.S. announced in late July that it would keep existing COVID - 19 restrictions on international travel in place for now due to the COVID - 19 delta variant.
Driven by the delta variant, cases are growing at home, especially among those who are unvaccinated, and appears likely to continue in the weeks ahead, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced at the time, shortly after the CDC and State Department set the United Kingdom as a Level 4 country.
The delta variant, first detected in India, has been identified around the world and U.S. health officials said the variant accounts for estimated 83% of the country's coronavirus cases.