LONDON — Most travelers to the United States will not be able to enter the European Union after it reopens its borders on Wednesday because coronavirus is still too prevalent in the US, European officials announced Tuesday.
The 27 EU members have been drawing up a list of countries whose virus levels are considered low enough to allow people from those places to travel to the block, which has been mostly closed since March.
That list of safe countries was officially revealed by European officials on Tuesday. The United States, with the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, was not in it.
The 15 countries that made the list are: Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.
China will also be included in the list if it allows entry to EU travelers in return.
The move is a sign of how the United States is viewed by Europe and elsewhere as a global hotbed of coronavirus.
The EU and the US experienced spikes of infection in late March and early April. But while stringent closure measures have seen those numbers decrease in Europe, in the United States there have been recent outbreaks in states like Florida and Texas, while President Donald Trump has encouraged society to reopen.
More than 125,000 people in the US have died from the coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to an NBC News count.
In March, when Europe was the world center for coronaviruses, Trump announced extensive travel restrictions, without telling any of his EU counterparts first.
But the EU says its selective travel list was not about political grudges and is instead based on epidemiological criteria.
A European report last week noted that the US had seen 107 cases per 100,000 people in the previous 14 days, while the EU average was 16 cases per 100,000 people.
For any country not listed, the EU restrictions on non-essential travel imposed in March still apply.
These restrictions do not apply to EU citizens abroad, health workers, people involved in the transport and cargo industries, diplomats and military personnel, and “passengers traveling for imperative family reasons”.
