The United States will require a Covid-19 test from travelers from China, due to the explosion in the number of cases in that country and the lack of information communicated by Beijing, the US health authorities announced today.
The measure takes effect on January 5 and “all air passengers aged 2 years or older from China will be required to take a test no later than two days before departure,” regardless of their nationality or their vaccination status, the Center revealed. of Diseases. Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement.
The CDC specified that this measure will also apply to passengers from Hong Kong and Macao.
The United States is particularly concerned that the rapid transmission of the virus in China will lead to the emergence of new variants.
A US official criticized “the lack of adequate and transparent sequencing data” provided by China.
In addition, “testing and the count of new cases has decreased” in China, making it difficult for US health authorities to identify new variants circulating in the country with “the lack of available data,” the same source added. , quoted by Agence France. -Press (AFP).
The tests will have to be presented to the airlines upon departure, the CDC said, with PCR or antigen tests being accepted, as well as proof of recovery from Covid-19 after a positive test, more than 10 days before the flight.
This decision follows similar announcements from several countries, including Japan or India, which also imposed mandatory tests on incoming Chinese.
In Portugal, the Ministry of Health has said today that it will maintain the control measures for Covid-19 currently in force. In a written response to the Lusa agency on the increase in SARS-CoV-2 infections in China, this ministry assured that the Portuguese authorities are monitoring the epidemiological situation “together with European partners and international organizations, that is, in the field of the activity of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control”.
Italy is already considering making the covid-19 test mandatory for travelers from China, but the Lombardy region, where the Malpensa international airport is located, in Milan, has already decided to “submit to a molecular test (…) all travelers and crew from China”.
In Italy, health is an area of competence of the regional authorities and therefore each of them can take different measures.
In 2020, Lombardy was the first region in Europe to go into lockdown to contain the pandemic of the new coronavirus responsible for covid-19 and still lives with the shock of the first wave of cases, which was highly fatal.
Chinese authorities ended most anti-Covid-19 measures without warning on December 7, amid growing public exasperation and a major hit to the economy after three years of restrictions.
Since then, China has seen an explosion in the number of cases among its 1.4 billion people, with hospitals and crematoriums overwhelmed and residents reporting a lack of fever medicine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) already expressed itself, last week, “seriously concerned” about the wave of new cases of Covid-19 in China, and asked Beijing for greater transparency to be able to deal with future pandemics.
Covid-19 is an infectious respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, detected at the end of 2019 in China and which has spread rapidly throughout the world.
Source: TSF
