New updates and alerts on the continued impact of COVID-19 on global mobility

We recently posted a number of updates and provided some really great resources for staying educated on the latest locations that were being impacted by COVID-19, but there are a number of new locations that we wanted to provide an update on.

• Ireland: Ireland is now leading the world in confirmed cases per million at 10.1K. This article from Bloomberg sheds some light on why this has happened but most point to the relaxing of restrictions around Christmas, and now hospitals are filling up and running out of intensive care beds. Ireland now has one of the strictest lockdown regimes in the world.
• United States: Anyone flying to the U.S. will soon need to show proof of a negative test for COVID-19, health officials announced on Jan. 12. On that day, the U.S. reported a new daily record of more than 4,300 COVID-19 deaths.
• Germany: Germany is tightening restrictions on incoming travelers. Starting Jan. 14, anyone entering the country from an area of risk must be able to prove that they are not infected with the coronavirus no later than 48 hours after entering the country.
• Japan: Japan declared a state of emergency in seven additional areas across the nation at the government's COVID-19 task force meeting on Jan. 13. The state of emergency will be implemented for Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, Aichi, Gifu, Fukuoka and Tochigi prefectures until Feb. 7.
• Switzerland: According to Reuters, Switzerland announced tighter measures on Jan. 13 to tackle new variants of the COVID-19 virus spreading across the country but fell short of implementing the full lockdown imposed by neighboring countries to tackle the pandemic. The country will close shops selling non-essential supplies starting Monday, Jan. 18, and it also ordered companies to require employees to work from home where possible. Switzerland extended the closure of restaurants, and cultural and sport sites by five weeks to now run until the end of February.

While we hold on to the hope of improvement due to the global initiative of vaccinating as many people as possible, mobility programs will continue to need to stay alert of the latest outbreaks and travel restrictions that could impact their programs. Be careful and stay healthy, everyone!