European Union mulls recommendation to block travelers including Americans due to COVID-19

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As European Union nations continue to ease coronavirus restrictions, EU member states are discussing barring visitors from several countries, including the US, according to EU officials speaking to CNN. These sources, who are involved in the talks, say they have not seen any lists mentioning specific countries.

When asked if the US was on a list of origin countries that might be barred from travel to Europe, a EU diplomat directed CNN to the first point of a June 11 checklist published by the European Commission on what to consider when allowing travelers into the EU.

The first point on the checklist asks whether the country can "be considered as being in a comparable or better epidemiological situation as the average in the EU+ area" with regard to number of new infections, trend of new infections and response in areas such as testing, surveillance, contact tracing, containment, treatment and reporting.

The US has the highest number of coronavirus deaths and infections in the world. On Tuesday afternoon in the US, at least 2,329,637 have been infected in the country and 121,029 have died, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

Among the options being discussed are travel restrictions based on US geographic regions, rather than a sweeping ban on the entire country, since some regions have higher infection rates than others, two EU officials told CNN.

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