The Margin: CDC warns Americans against traveling to Jamaica, Sri Lanka in latest COVID-19 guidance

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Two more popular island getaways have been added to the COVID-19 travel advisory list.

Jamaica and Sri Lanka are the newest destinations to make the list of riskiest places to travel during the pandemic, according to updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC also added Brunei, a southeast Asian country on the island of Borneo, to its “Level 4” category of COVID-19 travel notices.

The CDC advises Americans to avoid travel altogether to destinations in the Level 4 category, which applies to places that have had more than 500 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days. The U.S. itself has had 331 new infections per 100,000 people in just the past seven days.

The destinations join a list of nearly 80 places to which the CDC says to avoid travel, including France, Brazil, Greece, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The CDC also added 10 destinations to the “Level 3” category, including the Netherlands, which was previously Level 4. Malta, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Benin, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the United Arab Emirates and the Turks and Caicos Islands also join the Level 3 designation.

For Level 3 destinations, which have had 100 to 500 new cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days, the CDC advises that travelers are fully vaccinated before travel, and that unvaccinated travelers should avoid nonessential travel to that location.

The COVID-19 travel notice list is regularly updated. Last week, six places were added to the Level 4 list, including the Bahamas, Haiti, Kosovo, Lebanon, Morocco and Sint Maarten.

Last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walesnky said that unvaccinated Americans shouldn’t travel at all.

“First and foremost, if you are unvaccinated, we would recommend not traveling,” Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 press briefing ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Related: Unvaccinated Americans shouldn’t travel on Labor Day weekend, says CDC director

In its general international travel guidance, the CDC says that international travel poses additional risks, and even fully vaccinated travelers could contract or spread COVID-19 variants.

Travelers returning by air to the U.S., including U.S. citizens, are still required to have a negative COVID test before entry. You can see a map and complete list of the CDC’s COVID-19 travel notices here.

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