Travel Insurance Blog

More and more travelers are nervous about the recent Swine or H1N1 epidemic. With the recent recommendations from governments telling their citizens not to travel to Mexico, most people have been cancelling their trips to Mexico. Many travel operators and airlines have been very accomodating to their customers and have helped rebook travel to other destinations without any fees. Most cruise lines have or will be stopping any visits to Mexico ports until the swine flu risk subsides.

 The big question is how travel insurance companies will react. One travel insurance company announced that customers who travel to Mexico and get sick with Swine Flu will be covered, but those who cancel out of fear will not. This is the case even with the U.S. State Department advising Americans to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently moved the Pandemic threat level to 5 out of a scale of 6. It is expected by many that the scale will reach 6 very shortly as the flu spreads to many more countries and within communities. The big question now is how serious is the threat posed by this flu when approximately 30,000 in the USA die each year from the regular flu. The people in the USA and Canada who have been confirmed to have the H1N1 virus have had relatively mild reactions. At this time with approximately 2,000 confirmed cases of the swine flu in Mexico and possibly 150 deaths, the mortality rate looks high, but the real mortality rate is probably quite low because there are probably many thousands in Mexico who actually have the flu. Many experts believe we are only seeing the tip of the swine flu epidemic.

If you are traveling to Mexico or anywhere else in the world, it makes the purchase of travel medical insurance to cover your emergency medical expenses even more critical. The web site Travel Insurance Mexico.com is a great source of travel insurance if you are traveling to or from Mexico.