According to Reuters, two officials in the EU institutions said the EU council will announce on Monday changes on the epidemiologically safe third countries list.
The decision will remove six countries from the EU list, as well as the United States.
Removing those countries from the EU list means member countries should reimpose restrictions on travelers from said countries.
Travelers from the removed countries will no longer enter countries for non-essential purposes, like business and tourism.
The EU decided to reimpose restrictions on US travelers on Friday, August 27.
However, it will be officially announced on Monday, August 30. The complete list of the countries affected goes as follows:
- Israel
- Kosovo
- Lebanon
- Montenegro
- North Macedonia
- United States
A spike in COVID19 cases
The six countries have recently confirmed a surge in COVID19 cases within their territories.
According to WHO, the US detected over 38 million cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
Moreover, it recorded 169,512 cases within the last 24 hours.
It is worth mentioning that the US population is 328.2 million people.
In Israel, 80% of the 9.053 million people population took the vaccine; the country recorded 8,078 cases in the last 24 hours.
This increased the number of infected people to 1,031,810 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The EU list
The EU’s list of epidemiologically safe third countries includes non-EU countries that are presumably safe during the COVID19 pandemic.
Evidently, this is due to the low infection rate, and the Member States should open the borders for non-essential travelers from these countries.
The list undergoes a review every two weeks, and the Member countries have no legal obligation to apply it.
The EU published the list for the first time on June 30, 2020, and reviewed it for the last time on July 15, 2021, to add Ukraine.
At the moment, it contains 23 countries, including China, which still needs a confirmation from reciprocity.
