COVID-19: US eases travel advisory for India to 'moderate level' amid decline in cases

As India has been witnessing a downtrend in daily COVID-19 cases, the U.S. State Department has announced its new guidelines, lowering its India’s travel advisory to the second-lowest level. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said that even though India has a moderate level threat of COVID-19, citizens traveling to India must still comply with COVID-appropriate behaviour.

After India’s devastating second wave, several countries across the world either banned air travel to and from India or announced strict travel guidelines. Earlier this year in April, the daily cases in India suddenly spiked to enormous levels due to emergence of delta variant. However, the country witnessed gradual decline in number of daily COVID-19 infections. From a peak of 4,00,000 in May, the cases have come down to just over 30,000, out of which Kerala reported more than 50 per cent cases.

As the U.S. announced its renewed travel advisories, which were updated according to the current situation of the virus hotspots, the Centres for Disease Control put Turkey on the highest alert due to the surge in COVID cases. The CDC added that those traveling to India must be fully vaccinated and should wear masks along with maintaining social distance.

India's COVID-19 tally and vaccination drive

India reported 32,937 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, taking the total number of active COVID-19 cases to 3,81,947, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) informed. The fresh cases took the overall tally to 3,22,25,513, while 417 deaths took the death toll to 4,31,642. The national recovery rate remains at 97.48 per cent with 35,909 patients who have recovered during the last 24 hours. In addition, the weekly positivity rate still remains below 5 per cent and currently stands at 2.01%, slightly less than the past few weeks. 

As for vaccination update, the Union Health Ministry announced that 54.58 crore (54,58,57,108) people have been inoculated, including the ones in age groups above 18 and 45. In addition, more than 49.48 crore (49,48,05,652) COVID tests have been  conducted so far. 

Meanwhile, the Central government  has taken measures to curb the export of COVID rapid antigen testing kits amid warning of a possible third wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) in a notification on Monday, 16 August, informed that restrictions have been imposed on the export.