The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and State Department this week issued travel alerts for Germany and Denmark due to COVID-19.
The two European Union nations were placed by CDC in its Level 4 category, saying there is a “very high” chance of contracting COVID-19, the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
“Avoid travel to these destinations. If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel,” the CDC’s website says.
Dozens of countries, including other EU nations, are currently in the CDC’s Level 4 designation. Austria, the UK, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Switzerland, Romania, Ireland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are on the list.
“Do not travel to Germany due to COVID-19,” the State Department said, adding a similar bulletin for Denmark.
It comes as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel told leaders of her conservative party that measures being taken to stop the spread of the COVID-19 in Europe’s biggest economy were insufficient and that stronger action needed to be taken.
Germany has already decided to limit large parts of public life in areas where hospitals are filled with COVID-19 patients. Germany, with a nearly 70 percent vaccination, rate has a higher vaccination uptake than the United States, which currently sits at around 59 percent, according to the CDC.
Neighboring Austria on Monday imposed a full COVID-19 lockdown after announcing some renewed restrictions targeting unvaccinated people last week by placing thousands of police officers around high-traffic areas to do spot checks. German acting Health Minister Jens Spahn warned on Friday that Germany may follow suit.
Last week, Danish officials proposed a bill that would mandate a digital COVID-19 vaccine passport system for employees. While elected officials in the U.S. and EU nations have said that vaccine passports are necessary to curb the spread of the virus, little evidence, including studies, have been provided in showing their efficacy.
Critics of such measures have said that passport systems would create a two-tiered society of unvaccinated and vaccinated.
Meanwhile, a German professor studying the pandemic wrote for The Lancet that it is unwise to stigmatize unvaccinated individuals, arguing that studies have shown that fully inoculated people play a significant role in the transmission of COVID-19. He did note that vaccinated individuals typically develop less severe disease from the CCP virus.
Professor Gunter Kampf, of the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at the University of Greifswald in Germany, wrote that he believes the widely deployed phrase, “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” is inaccurate and “too simple.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
