World Tourism Organisation (WTO) has reported that about five countries in the last 24 hrs amongst 217 countries across the globe have fully returned their life back to normal through lifting all restrictions that were hitherto put in place because of coronavirus.
The countries are Albania, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, North Macedonia, and Tanzania
According to the report, all COVID-19 travel restrictions were all lifted in the said five countries which make it two percent of the countries worldwide that had restriction.
The report added that 32 percent of all the destinations, or 65 percent in total, has remained closed for international tourism due to the global pandemic with just half of them, that is 38 destinations, being shut for at least 40 weeks.
Meanwhile, partial closure of borders is being applied by 73 countries or 34 percent of all destinations across the globe.
The report added, “At present, the persistent serious epidemiological situation and in particular the emergence of different SARSCoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) have reversed the trend.
“And this had resulted in the tightening of travel restrictions, mostly directed at destinations in which these VOCs have been verified,”.
When the pandemic was at its peak last year, the number of international tourist trips globally decreased by almost between 74% to 1 billion trips when compared to the previous year.
The pandemic crisis has threatened between 100 million and 120 million jobs in the industry.
