The United States will mandate a covid-19 test for travelers from China, due to the explosion in cases in that country and the lack of information Beijing has communicated, US health authorities announced on Wednesday.
The measure will take effect on January 5 and “all air passengers aged 2 years or older from China must take a test no later than two days before departure,” regardless of their nationality or their vaccination status, the Center for Diseases revealed. Control and Prevention (CDC) in a statement.
The CDC specified that this measure will also apply to passengers from Hong Kong and Macau.
From 5 Jan. 2023: Travelers flying from China to the US, or who have been in China in the past 10 days and are flying from certain airports, must have a negative #COVID-19 test taken within 2 days before #travel to the US or documentation of recovery. https://t.co/VSJz2W6kPT pic.twitter.com/J9DujizieA
— CDC (@CDCgov) December 28, 2022
The United States in particular is concerned that new variants will emerge due to the rapid transmission of the virus in China.
A US official criticized “the lack of adequate and transparent sequence data” provided by China.
In addition, “testing and counting of new cases has declined” in China, making it more 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-Pressure (AFP).
The tests will have to be presented to airlines upon departure, the CDC said, accepting PCR or antigen tests, as well as proof of recovery from Covid-19 after testing positive, more than 10 days before the flight.
This decision follows similar announcements from several countries, including Japan or India, which have also imposed mandatory testing on incoming Chinese.
In Portugal, the Ministry of Health said today that it will maintain the covid-19 control measures currently in place. 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, namely in the context of the activity of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control”.
Italy has already made the covid-19 test mandatory for travelers from China. The Lombardy region, where the international airport of Malpensa, in Milan, is located, had already decided to “subject all travelers and crew members from China to molecular testing (…)”.
In Italy, health is an area of competence of the regional authorities, and each of them can therefore take different measures.
In 2020, Lombardy was the first region in Europe to go into quarantine to contain the pandemic of the new coronavirus responsible for covid-19 and is still living with the trauma of the shock of the first wave of cases, which are very deadly used to be.
The Chinese authorities ended most measures against Covid-19 on December 1 without notice.
Since then, China has seen an explosion in cases among its 1.4 billion people, with hospitals and crematoria overwhelmed and residents reporting a lack of fever medicines.
The World Health Organization (WHO) last week expressed “serious concern” over the surge in new COVID-19 cases in China, asking Beijing for more transparency to deal with future pandemics.
Covid-19 is an infectious respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, which was discovered in China at the end of 2019 and has spread rapidly around the world.
Source: DN
