The EU yesterday reopened its borders to visitors from 15 countries — but not the virus-stricken US, where COVID-19 cases rose by more than 47,000 on Tuesday according to a Reuters tally, the biggest one-day spike since the start of the pandemic.
In Brussels, the EU finalized the list of countries whose health situation was deemed safe enough to allow residents to enter the bloc.
Notably excluded were Russia and Brazil, as well as the US, whose daily death toll passed 1,000 on Tuesday for the first time since June 10.
Photo: Reuters
The countries that made it onto the list are Algeria, Australia, Canada, Japan, Georgia, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.
Travelers from China, where the virus first emerged late last year, would be allowed on the condition that Beijing reciprocates and opens the door to EU residents.
The border relaxation, to be reviewed in two weeks and left to member states to implement, is a bid to help rescue the continent’s battered tourism sector, which has been choked by a ban on all non-essential travel in place since the middle of March.
In Washington, US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci told a US Senate committee that “clearly we are not in total control right now... I am very concerned, because it could get very bad.”
Fauci said the daily increase in new cases could reach 100,000 unless a nationwide push was made to tamp down the resurgent virus.
“We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk,” he said.
Fauci said there was no guarantee of a vaccine, although early data had been promising.
“Hopefully, there will be doses available by the beginning of next year,” he said.
Alarming spikes in Texas and Florida are driving the national total of new cases to more than 40,000 per day, and they need to be tamped down quickly to avoid dangerous surges elsewhere in the country, Fauci said.
Texas alone reported 6,975 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, its highest tally yet.
“I’m very concerned and I’m not satisfied with what’s going on, because we’re going in the wrong direction,” Fauci said.
The pandemic has claimed more than 127,000 American lives so far and more than 511,000 around the world.
US Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican who chairs the Senate panel, urged US President Donald Trump to end the politicization of wearing a mask by putting one on himself.
“The president has plenty of admirers, they would follow his lead,” Alexander said. “It would help end this political debate.”
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Tuesday doubled to 16 the number of US states whose residents must go into quarantine for 14 days if they visit any of the northeastern states.
Meanwhile, the Pan American Health Organization warned that the coronavirus death toll in Latin America and the Caribbean could top 400,000 by October without stricter public health measures.
That would represent a quadrupling of fatal cases in the region.
On Tuesday, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro scored a victory when a judge overturned a ruling that had forced him to wear a mask in public.
The judge deemed the rule redundant, as masks are already mandatory in Brasilia.
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