US warns against travel to 80% of all countries due to COVID-19: Here's where
The list includes Canada, Mexico, the UK and all of South America.
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All overseas travel is being discouraged by the US government.
The US has issued Level 4: Do Not Travel advisories for around 80% of all nations, the Department of State first announced Monday. The travel advisories were updated Wednesday "to better reflect" current COVID-19 health notices about other countries from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The list of countries was published Wednesday, and includes do-not-travel warnings for Canada, the UK, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. All of South America is off-limits, and even most of Central America.
Europe's Level 4 warnings extend to Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and many others. Much of Africa and the Middle East are also covered, and even Antarctica was branded with a "Do Not Travel" warning.
Read more: Vaccine passports for COVID-19: How they'll be a part of global travel
The countries that escaped with lower-level warnings include Pacific nations like Australia, New Zealand and Fiji; South East Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Singapore; some African nations including Ghana, Nigeria and Morocco; and even Asian giants China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. Very few European countries escaped the Level 4 warning -- just Iceland.
You can see a US travel advisory color-coded map of the world and a list of all the countries here.
"The Department of State strongly recommends US citizens reconsider all travel abroad," a press release from the department said. "This does not imply a reassessment of the current health situation in a given country, but rather reflects an adjustment in the State Department's Travel Advisory system to rely more on CDC's existing epidemiological assessments."
The US has vaccinated tens of millions more people than every other nation in the world, with more than 76 million people in America now vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. India, in second place, has fully vaccinated almost 16.5 million people, and is followed by the UK, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Indonesia and Germany. The US sits just outside the top 10 in terms of proportion of the population fully vaccinated, at 23%.
The news comes as global deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 3 million on Monday.