The European Union plans to recommend that its member states reinstate restrictions on US tourists because of rising coronavirus infection levels in the country, EU diplomats say.

A decision to remove the US from a safe list of countries for non-essential travel would reverse advice from June, when the 27-nation bloc recommended lifting restrictions on US travellers before the summer tourism season.

The guidance could come as early as this week, according to the EU diplomats. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the review process was still ongoing.

Any decision would be nonbinding, however. The EU has no unified COVID-19 tourism policy and national governments have the authority to decide whether they keep their borders open to US tourists.

The European Council updates the list based on criteria relating to coronavirus infection levels. It gets reviewed every two weeks.

The threshold for being on the EU list is having not more than 75 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days. Coronavirus cases have surged in the US in recent weeks, running at more than 1100 a day, the highest level since mid-March.

Last week, new cases per day averaged over 152,000, turning the clock back to the end of January, and the number of people in the hospital with the coronavirus was around 85,000, a number not seen since early February.

AAP

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