US to require arrivals from China to provide
negative Covid test
Other countries including Italy have taken similar
steps after Beijing’s rollback of ‘zero-Covid’ policies led to surge in cases
Angela
Giuffrida in Rome, Melissa Davey in Melbourne, and agencies
Wed 28 Dec
2022 21.10 GMT
The US has
announced all travellers from China must provide a negative Covid-19 test to
enter the country, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a
surge of infections.
The
increase in cases across China follows the rollback of the nation’s strict
anti-virus controls. Beijing’s “zero Covid” policies had kept the country’s
infection rate low but fuelled public frustration and crushed economic growth.
From 5
January, all travellers to the US from China will be required to take a Covid
test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before
boarding their flight. The testing applies to anyone two years and older.
Other
countries have taken similar steps in an effort to keep infections from
spreading beyond China’s borders. Japan will require a negative Covid-19 test
upon arrival for travellers from China, and Malaysia announced new tracking and
surveillance measures. India, South Korea and Taiwan are requiring virus tests
for visitors from China.
Italy
became the first country in Europe to make it obligatory for people arriving
from China to be tested for Covid following Beijing moving to reopen its
borders.
Italy’s
decision to impose testing for all China arrivals comes almost three years
after it became the first western country to be hit by the pandemic, which to
date has claimed more than 180,000 lives in the country.
“The
measure is essential to guarantee the surveillance and identification of any
variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population,” said Orazio
Schillaci, the Italian health minister.
Italy has
already been monitoring swab tests at Rome’s Fiumicino airport and Milan’s
Malpensa airport, where on Monday one in two passengers arriving on flights
from China who undertook non-mandatory tests were found to be positive for
coronavirus.
The US will
expand genomic sequencing of travellers in an effort to
“detect and
characterise new and rare” Covid variants, according to its top health
authority. Under the program, the US collects anonymous nasal swabs from
arriving international travellers on selected flights.
Virologists
are watching nervously how China’s decision to drop quarantine for overseas
visitors from 8 January and from the same date resume issuing visas to
foreigners and passports to its own people may affect the global spread of the
disease.
A Downing
Street spokesperson said the UK was not looking at travel restrictions on
visitors from China.
The end of
China’s zero-Covid approach comes amid surging case numbers, with low
vaccination rates especially among elderly people. Ascertaining the spread and
severity of Covid is more difficult than ever as Beijing has stopped publishing
daily case numbers and ended mass testing.
“They’ve
changed very quickly from a zero Covid approach to completely relaxing things,
so maybe that’s happened too quickly to keep up,” said Australian infectious
diseases expert Prof Dominic Dwyer, one of the team tasked with travelling to
Wuhan early in 2021 to investigate the origins of the pandemic in a report for
the World Health Organization (WHO).
“We don’t
know what variants are circulating in China at the moment … [and] whether those
variants are different in terms of their response to vaccination.”
While
official statistics from China report just three new Covid deaths for Tuesday
after Beijing changed the way it recorded Covid-19 deaths to include only those
who die from respiratory failure or pneumonia, the British health data
modelling firm Airfinity estimates there are now more than 1m cases and more
than 5,000 new infections each day.
Experts say
the lack of data is likely to be masking the number and severity of cases, and
physicians in China are reporting a massive infection and death surge. Howard
Bernstein, a Beijing-based doctor, told Reuters that patients are arriving
sicker and in greater numbers, and that the ICU ward where he works at the
Beijing United Family hospital was full.
Nearby
countries are taking their own measures to prevent a surge of infections.
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Tuesday announced that from 30
December, arrivals who have been in mainland China at any time in the seven
days prior will need to provide a negative Covid test on arrival or quarantine
for seven days.
Having
eased its own border restrictions in October, Japan is capping the number of
arrivals from China. “Concern has been growing in Japan as it is difficult to
grasp the detailed situation,” Kishida said as he announced the measures.
Japan also
said it would limit flights from Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China to four
airports. Hong Kong’s government on Wednesday asked Japan to drop the airport
restriction, saying the decision will impact about 60,000 passengers.
Taiwan’s
government said on Wednesday that it would test arrivals from China from 1
January and that it will conduct virus sequencing for those who test positive
to track new variants. In Malaysia, the ministry of health is preparing for a
feared Covid surge by pushing for people to get booster doses and promoting
antiviral drugs.
An
Australian government spokesperson told the Guardian that while the department
of health “continues to monitor the global situation, travel arrangements for
Australians and visitors to the country remain unchanged”.
China’s
decision to resume issuing passports for the first time in almost three years
could allow large numbers of Chinese tourists to travel abroad for next month’s
lunar new year holiday. Travel services companies Trip.com and Qunar said
international ticket bookings and searches for visa information on their
websites rose five to eight times after Tuesday’s announcement, with top
destinations including Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States, Britain
and Australia.
The WHO
director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called on China to share
data and conduct relevant studies to help the world understand which Covid
variants are circulating. Dwyer said data was crucial because in countries
where Covid-19 is out of control, the sheer number of people infected makes it
more likely that there will be a rare event that leads to changes in the virus,
potentially creating a new variant of concern.
Prolonged
lockdowns in China also mean a significant proportion of the population have
not been infected with newer variants, and the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines
China has relied on appear less effective than mRNA vaccines used elsewhere.
“That is
the environment where you’d expect new variants to appear,” Dwyer said. “So
therefore monitoring people returning from China who are sick is going to be
important. We don’t know … whether those variants [in China] are any different
to what we’ve seen elsewhere.”
China has
rejected western reporting of the surge in Covid cases since it dramatically
relaxed restrictions. “Currently the development of China’s epidemic situation
is overall predictable and under control,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson,
Wang Wenbin, said on Wednesday.
“Hyping,
smearing and political manipulation with ulterior motives can’t stand the test
of facts,” he added.
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