Today Wednesday 1st July 2020 the European Union reopened its borders to visitors from 15 countries but had excluded the United States, where deaths are spiking once again and a top health official warned the country was heading in the ”wrong direction”.
Russia, Brazil, and the US residents are not included in the final list of nations safe enough to be allowed to enter the EU, where the daily death toll passed 1,000 on Tuesday for the first time since June 10.
Anthony Fauci the US infectious diseases expert said that the United States could see 100,000 cases a day if the current trend continued, and several US states imposed 14-day quarantines on travellers from other states.
The European Union hopes relaxing restrictions on countries from Algeria to Uruguay will breathe life into its tourism sector, which has been choked by a ban on non-essential travel since mid-March. and travelers from China, where the virus first discovered late last year, will be allowed to enter the bloc only if Beijing will also open the door to the EU residents.
With over 10 million known infections worldwide and more than 500,000 deaths, the pandemic is not even close to being over, the World Health Organization has warned.
In the US, Fauci, a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, warned Congress on Tuesday that officials were not in total control right now and the country was going in ”the wrong direction” and would not be surprised if it goes up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around, he said.
Spikes in Texas and Florida are driving the national increase and need to be tamped down quickly, and Texas has reported 6,975 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday alone, its highest tally yet in an outbreak that has killed some 127,000 people nationwide — one-quarter of the global total.
The Pan American Health Organization warned, meanwhile, that the death toll in Latin America and the Caribbean could quadruple to more than 400,000 by October without stricter public health measures.
