The State Department is set to announce a Level 4 travel advisory applying to all international travel, its most severe warning, three individuals with knowledge of the pending announcement said.
The advisory would instruct all Americans abroad to either return to the United States or prepare to shelter in place, given the global threat of the coronavirus outbreak. Americans also would be instructed not to travel abroad.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has approved the advisory, the individuals said. The move would represent a step beyond the department's current Level 3 travel warning, which merely encourages Americans to reconsider travel abroad.
Two State Department officials confirmed the pending advisory. The State Department press office did not respond to requests to comment, but announced on Thursday that U.S. passport agencies will only accept applications from customers with life-or-death emergencies who plan to travel within 72 hours.
The highly unusual State Department travel advisory is set to come after seven weeks of steadily increasing restrictions on U.S. travel, after President Donald Trump first moved to limit travel from China at the end of January. Other countries have moved to close their borders and impose further travel restrictions as the virus has spread beyond Asia to Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
There are more than 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The World Health Organization on Thursday said that there are more than 191,000 confirmed cases across more than 150 countries; an unofficial tally by researchers at Johns Hopkins University pegs that number still higher.
A State Department official based overseas expressed concern about the pending advisory, saying he worried it would cause panic among Americans. The official pointed out the difficulties of finding flights under the current conditions.
Hundreds or maybe thousands of Americans remain stranded abroad, caught between travel bans and massive airline flight cancellations. Some Americans are stranded in countries like Guatemala, which has issued a ban on any flights coming or going, and others are having to pay dearly for what flights are left, often transiting through several countries before finding a way back home.
And the State Department has largely been absent, according to interviews with several Americans stranded abroad, who reported receiving no help from U.S. embassies.
Stephanie Marlin was in Guatemala City visiting a friend when the Guatemalan government closed down its borders, a day before her flight was scheduled to take her back to Nashville. She said she had communicated multiple times with Delta Air Lines about her flight, which was supposed to leave on Tuesday. Delta assured her that she was “gold” and that her flight would leave as planned.
“I really blame the airlines because I could have left earlier and would have left earlier,” Marlin told POLITICO.
The U.S. government hasn’t been much help either. In her first attempts to reach the embassy there, Marlin said she repeatedly got an emailed form response which offered no actionable help. When she called an emergency number, it simply played a recording with the same information.
It wasn’t until she had a friend get in touch with the office of her member of Congress, Jim Cooper, that she was able to speak to a human at the embassy. But even then, the embassy employee said they were powerless to do anything given Guatemala’s border shut down.
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State Department to tell Americans don't travel abroad, come home if overseas - POLITICO
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