CDC: ‘Avoid Travel’ To This Caribbean Destination Due To Covid-19

Looking to go to Aruba to “beach” about the Covid-19 pandemic? Well, you may want to postpone your plans. This week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has moved this Caribbean destination up to the “avoid travel to” level on its Covid-19 Travel Recommendations.

That means that you should shelve non-essential travel to Aruba such your plans to visit the Aruba Aloe Factory, Museum and Store, assuming that you don’t have an absolute aloe emergency. Aruba is now at Level 4, up from Level 3. The CDC risk levels are like golf scores and the frequency at which your cat uses your credit card without you knowing it. The higher the number, the worse things are, with Level 4 being the highest level.

Going to Aruba now would land you in the middle of the biggest Covid-19 coronavirus surge that they’ve had throughout the pandemic. On January 4, Aruba hit an all-time high of 1,752 reported Covid-19 cases for a day, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Compare that to the total 23,694 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 181 Covid-19-related deaths that they’ve had since January 2020.

As I have described before for Forbes, a country moves to Level 4 is the number of new reported Covid-19 cases over the past 28 days tops 500 per 100,000 residents. It’s at level 3 when this number is from 100 to 499, Level 2 when it’s from 50 to 99, and Level 1 when the number drops below 50.

The Level 3 list had some new members. Four destinations—Azerbaijan, Moldova, Mongolia and Romania— moved from Level 4 to Level 3. Two destinations—Bahamas and Sint Maarten— moved up to level 3 from Level 2. Kenya jumped from Level 1 to Level 3. And Suriname went from “Unknown,” because of lack of enough data, to Level 3.

Expect these lists to continue changing at least over the next couple months. Sort of like your credit card bill when your cat has your credit card. Various countries have been experiencing Winter surges of the severe acute-respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) including, of course, the U.S. This is probably not the best time for that around the world that you’ve been planning for years. If you must travel, check the CDC list regularly and make sure that you keep your travel plans flexible. After all, there are other ways to cover yourself head to toe in aloe.