While the U.S. State Department issues travel advisories based on the political and safety situation in a given country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rates and releases warnings about health-related dangers in different parts of the world.
Assigned to specific outbreaks rather than individual countries, the rankings range from level one’s “practice usual precautions” (for diseases that are consistently present in a given region) to level four’s “avoid all travel,” in the case of pandemics and other major health crises.
Since the summer of 2025, the CDC has kept an advisory over the outbreak of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus known to cause fever, swelling, and joint pain that in some cases can become severe and last for years.
Last year’s outbreak began in China’s…