(Need a more recent update? Please click here for interactive map from OurWorldInData.org.)
A few days back I posted an update to the Caribbean area including Bermuda (a little to the north east), and parts of Central America. Remember how I said that we needed to watch the data closely due to Omicron? Well what a difference a few days make! Here’s the map from before.
And here’s the map as of yesterday.
Mexico, which we weren’t looking at earlier is clearly darker orange now indicating an uptick in cases. So is Panama. Belize, despite its Gold Star Hotel program is looking less like a great destination right now and it has changed to the darkest red, or highest risk zone. Even Costa Rica and Cuba have moved up a risk level. Many other countries have likewise changed for the worse.
Looking at the 28-day averages, things are looking up, and I don’t mean that in a good way:
Aruba is just about off the charts here. And other places where the numbers are coming down still have very high numbers. Let’s keep everything within level 2 or lower as indicated below.
CDC travel guidelines as of December 6, 2021.
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Level 3: High level of COVID-19 (equivalent to 1000-5000 cases per 1m)
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Level 2: Moderate level of COVID-19 (equivalent to 500-999 cases per 1m)
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Make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel.
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Unvaccinated travelers who are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 should avoid nonessential travel to this destination. If you must travel and have concerns, talk to your doctor.
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Level 1: Low level of COVID-19 (equivalent to 500 or fewer cases per 1m)
Here’s what we get when we filter by the current case numbers.
Almost every country from the prior graph has been eliminated. El Savador (which we didn’t include last time) is looking pretty good, although the data reporting for the past 6-8 months looks to be a bit sketchy. As I started looking at other sources for El Salvador data, they all showed more or less the same thing without getting into what’s happening there. Wikipedia, of all places, gives a hint that they are in fact taking things very seriously, but it also seems that there’s a good deal of violence and human rights abuses still happening there, so you might not want to travel there at this time unless you have a compelling reason. We discussed Nicaragua last time as well, and the contentiousness about the official data being a substantial under count. Likewise, Haiti, which seems to be doing quite well on the COVID scene, has some other problems that maybe make it an unattractive destination. According to the State Department “Violent crime, such as armed robbery and carjacking, is common. Travelers are sometimes followed and violently attacked and robbed shortly after leaving the Port-au-Prince international airport.”
This leaves Honduras which was one of our finalists from a couple days back.
It’s still looking to be doing fairly well, but you should see our last post and also take note of US State Department travel advisories.
Here are the results for everyone else in that group.
All the rates of COVID are increasing in these countries some precipitously. As such, I would advise caution in traveling before the COVID cases start coming down both for your own protection, and also to avoid potentially infecting others when you travel. Travel in this area of the world is risky at the current time.
All the best!
Tim