US CDC removes Vietnam from 'Do Not Travel' list

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday dropped its "Do Not Travel" Covid-19 recommendations for about 90 countries and territories, including Vietnam.

About 120 destinations now have a Level 3 advisory - including Australia, the UK, Italy and many other popular European destinations - for “high” levels of the Coronavirus, while 12 destinations sit at Level 2. Another 55 are designated Level 1, or lowest-risk.

The countries and territories moved to "Level 3: Covid-19 High," from Level 4 include the UK, France, Israel, Turkey, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Russia, and Vietnam.

The CDC currently lists no countries at "Level 4" or "Special Circumstances/Do Not Travel." During the pandemic, the agency has updated weekly its list of countries travelers should avoid because of the Coronavirus, with its “Level 4” warning indicating very high levels of the virus and instructing all travelers to avoid the area.

Last week, the CDC said it was revising its travel recommendations and said it planned to reserve its Level 4 heath notices "for special circumstances, such as rapidly escalating case trajectory or extremely high case counts."

Vietnam fully reopened its tourism market from March 15, after over two years of paralysis due to the heavy impact of the pandemic.

On Wednesday evening, the Health Ministry announced 12,011 new domestic Covid-19 cases in 61 localities, down by 2,649 compared with Tuesday. The average daily number of recorded community infections in the past seven days was 19,380, down 53% against the previous seven days.

In the past 24 hours, 13 Covid-19 patients have died, bringing the average single-day death toll in the last seven days to 18, down 32% from the previous seven-day period.

The death tally since the beginning of the pandemic has reached 42,957, or 0.4 percent of all infections.

In the latest wave that hit the country in late April, more than 10.4 million cases have been confirmed and 8.9 million of them have reportedly recovered.

The five localities with highest numbers of infections are Hanoi (over 1.53 million cases), Ho Chi Minh City (nearly 607,000), Nghe An (more than 476,600), Binh Duong (over 382,800), and Bac Giang (380,590).