Earlier this week, President Trump announced a new travel ban on most countries in Europe. This travel ban prevented foreign nationals from entering the US If they had visited the following countries in the past 14 days:
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Notably, the UK and Ireland were left off this list.
This was presumably done because the UK and Ireland are not part of the Schengen zone. However, many people started to point out that coronavirus cases were on the rise in those countries and were questioning why there was not a travel ban in place for the UK and Ireland.
Well, it turns out that the cases have continued to increase in the UK and Ireland. In fact, the deaths from the coronavirus in the UK doubled in the past 24 hours. So things got extra serious pretty quick and now the travel ban will be extended to both of those countries as of Monday at midnight Eastern standard time. It is scheduled to last for 30 days though that is subject to change.
Trump is also considering domestic travel restrictions as well. These restrictions would focus on states in the US that have a higher count of cases, such as the state of Washington.
It’s not clear to me exactly how the domestic travel bans would work. It seems like it could get more messy than preventing foreign nationals from entering.
The ban extension to the UK is going to hurt US airlines even more and a domestic ban could do even more damage, especially if a ban is applied to a highly populated state like New York or California. Airlines that focus on domestic flights like Southwest could really feel the effects of such a ban.
I would advise everyone to put their air travel plans on hold right now. Changes are being made almost every day and new bans might be coming into effect. If you are a US citizen or another type of excepted individual, you will be able to access the US but only through certain airports and you might have to undergo a quarantine in some cases. So unless you absolutely have to travel outside the US right now, I would postpone all air travel plans.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
Unfortunately, you have a point about putting travel on hold. I’m still waiting, and if California and New York ends up on the list of states with travel restrictions, I will have no choice because my flights are going into both states.
Everyday a new country either bans flights or goes on lockdown. And now I’m almost running out of countries to visit. Even the UAE has suspended visas.
Looks like I’ll end up just traveling around Mexico this spring, especially if Mexico ends up closing their border to the U.S. as they indicated this week due to the rising numbers of Coronavirus cases in the U.S.
Everyday a new adventure.
Yeah man, I really feel for you. You are literally in the midst of it all right now.