EU's updated safe travel list includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, but not Georgia

The European Union’s updated Covid-19 safe travel list now includes Armenia and Azerbaijan but not Georgia. In addition to Armenia and Azerbaijan, the list includes nine more countries.

According to the decision of the Council of the European Union, the following countries will receive the right of unlimited entry into the member states of the European Union and the Schengen area from the end of this week:

• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Brunei
• Canada
• Jordan
• Kosovo
• Moldova
• Montenegro
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia

The 11 countries added to the list recently reported only a small number of new cases of coronavirus – 38 new cases were confirmed in Azerbaijan, four in Kosovo, and one in Brunei over one day.

EU member states are encouraged to gradually remove restrictions for countries included in the Safe Countries List.

The Council updates the list of epidemiologically safe countries every two weeks. Georgia was included in the list of these countries once – on June 30, 2020. But a few months later, in October 2020, due to the worsening epidemiological situation, it was once again excluded.

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Although Georgia lifted curfews and relaxed restrictions, the epidemiological situation is still difficult.

According to data over the last seven days, Georgia ranks 17th in the world in terms of mortality per million inhabitants and 147 in terms of vaccinated persons.

Only 16 countries have higher mortality rates than Georgia: Paraguay, Namibia, Seychelles, Colombia, Argentina, Suriname, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Oman, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Russia, and Mongolia.

Georgia ranks 27th in the world in terms of the number of new infections per million population.

At this point, 103,170 people have been fully vaccinated in Georgia – only 2.6% of the population.