US imposes mandatory COVID-19 testing for travelers from China

Washington:

The United States will impose mandatory COVID-19 testing on travelers from China, US health officials said Wednesday, along with India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan to take new measures following Beijing’s decision to lift its strict zero-COVID policy. lift.

The officials told reporters that starting Jan. 5, all airline passengers aged 2 and older must have a negative test result no later than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau.

Passengers who test positive more than 10 days before a flight can provide documentation of recovery in lieu of the negative test result, federal officials said.

In an abrupt policy shift, China this month began dismantling the world’s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and extensive testing, putting its battered economy on track for a full reopening next year.

Lifting the restrictions, after widespread protests against it, means COVID is spreading largely unchecked and is likely to infect millions of people a day, according to some international health experts.

Beijing has received international criticism that official COVID data and death tolls are inconsistent with the magnitude of the outbreak.

Some global health experts have said the virus could infect as many as 1 million people a day, and international modeling groups have predicted that China could experience 2 million deaths or more.

Earlier this week, US officials cited “the lack of transparent data” from China, a persistent complaint from Washington about China’s handling of the pandemic, as a reason to consider its own travel restrictions.

The US and China’s approaches to combating COVID have been markedly different during the pandemic.

High infection rates in the United States at the start of the pandemic gave Beijing room to claim that its model of strict COVID prevention measures had saved lives.

China has struggled to vaccinate its elderly population and has yet to authorize foreign mRNA vaccines. The overall vaccination rate is above 90%, but the percentage for adults who have had booster injections drops to 57.9% and to 42.3% for people aged 80 and older, according to data released by the Chinese government last week.

The country has nine domestically developed COVID vaccines approved for use, but none have been updated to target the highly contagious Omicron variant.

In June, the United States withdrew a 17-month-old requirement that people entering the country by air must test negative for COVID-19. It still requires most non-U.S. citizens to be vaccinated against COVID to travel to the United States.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)