Boarding with caution
▶ Chaos of passengers flying to China with falsified COVID-19 test reports alleviated following tightened requirements
Cases of people coming to China with forged COVID- 19 test reports have occasionally happened this year, inconveniencing the nation’s epidemic prevention and control work.
In the face of sporadic imported positive cases, Chinese authorities recently tightened requirements for passengers flying in from several countries and regions including the US and the UK, where the pandemic remains serious or is getting worse.
The stricter management on entrants’ COVID- 19 testing results has to some extent curbed the chaos of falsified reports, said overseas Chinese and airlines reached by the Global Times.
Previously, the situation has caused anxiety and fear among Chinese communities in some countries like Russia and the Philippines. Many said they were worried about transmitting the virus on a future flight back to China from someone sitting beside who may happen to be a COVID- 19 carrier holding a forged test result.
“Fortunately, now I don’t see this case happen around me anymore,” said a Chinese citizen surnamed Zhou, who lives in London amid the pandemic.
Rampant fabrication
Forging or tampering with COVID- 19 testing results was once rampant among some overseas Chinese communities, with a few people going to local underground agencies for a fake report before flying back. They uploaded the fabricated report to the online platform of a local Chinese embassy or consulate in the hope of getting a health code.
The reports produced by some agencies looked like the real thing, said a Manila- based Chinese blogger called “Starry” by her some 20,000 followers, many of whom are Chinese residents in the Philippines.
Starry sometimes received messages from her followers who complained about being harassed by ads of report- forging agencies. Occasionally, there were a few followers who shared the experience of getting fake reports from these agencies.
In a message Starry received in August, one follower showed her a screenshot of a chat history between him and an agency. “Give me 1,200 yuan ($ 184), I give you a report in the name of a top- 4 hospital in the Philippines,” the agency wrote, showed the screenshot.
“You don’t even have to go to the hospital.”
Many of the agencies were built by Chinese flight ticket sellers or travel agents in the Philippines, who might collude with local medical institutions in fabricating COVID- 19 testing reports, Starry said, criticizing these people as immoral. “They make money at the expense of others’ health,” she told the Global Times.
The Chinese government had reported several cases of global passengers flying into China with fabricated COVID- 19 test results.
In September, two COVID- 19 patients returning to China from the Philippines were found to have tampered with their test reports before boarding, said the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines. In November, the Chinese Embassy in Spain and the Chinese Consulate- General in Dubai respectively reported a local case of Chinese passengers tampering with their test reports before boarding.
In Russia, a flight from Moscow to Zhengzhou, Central China’s Henan Province, was canceled on November 25 after the Chinese Embassy in Russia found that the 190 passengers on the flight all had the same statistics in their blood tests, which means the testing results were not verifiably true.
Xu Wenteng, head of a Chinese volunteer association in Russia, told the Global Times that some previous fabrications were due to “technical problems” in hospitals wanting to save effort if they found prospective passengers were not infected.
Ironically, these fake testing results were made in the midst of Russia fighting one of the world’s worst COVID- 19 outbreaks – newly confirmed cases have numbered more than 20,000 every day in the past month.
Harder to ‘ muddle through’
Passengers flying in with fake COVID- 19 test reports seem more difficult to muddle through after many Chinese embassies and consulates successively made stricter requirements.
The Chinese Embassy and consulates in the US, for instance, announced last week it would only accept test results from listed institutions issued by them. IgM serum antibody tests are required to be performed through venous blood sampling only, and nucleic acid testing reports must specify the sampling methods, they said.
Fred Wu, who lives in San Francisco, the US, said that local COVID- 19 testing market was lucrative before the new regulations were made.
While people can register for free testing in the US, it usually takes longer than the 48 hours that the Chinese government requires to get the result.
“As a result, many people had to resort to the laboratories opened by Chinese people to take a [ faster] test,” Wu told the Global Times, saying it cost some $ 400 three weeks ago and was likely to “continue to rise.”
To plug the loopholes in those laboratories, local Chinese consulates have listed some laboratories as qualified places to get the test results, Wu added. Iris He, a Chinese student studying in South Korea, recalled the process of virus prevention she went through when returning to China last week, from applying entry permit, taking nucleic acid and serologic tests, to uploading the reports for a pre- departure health code issued by the Chinese Embassy.
A green- color health code with an “HS” mark, which reflects the passenger’s nucleic acid and serologic test reports and was
approved by Chinese embassies or consulates, is now a prerequisite for boarding flights, several domestic and foreign airlines told the Global Times.
Moreover, “airport personnel check the health code of the passengers flying to China during the check- in,” said staffers with Air China. “Only those with a correct health code are allowed to board,” a Finnair employee said.
A sales director with Juneyao Airlines told the Global Times that Juneyao’s passengers returning to China must show their health codes at least twice – when printing the boarding pass and at the boarding gate.
Iris He said she supports the inspection process. “It is not that troublesome to obey the rule,” she said to the Global Times. “You have to be responsible for yourself and others.”
The phenomenon of falsifying COVID- 19 testing reports has recently decreased, thanks to tightened inspections. Some overseas Chinese citizens in countries including the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Russia told the Global Times that they haven’t heard of such wrongdoings happening in their communities in the past couple of weeks.
A few air ticket scalpers reached by the Global Times reporters pretending to be overseas Chinese ticket buyers said they don’t, or no longer, offer report forging services.
When asked whether one could pass the testing with some symptoms of a cough and fever, one scalper said that “you should better wait for later after your symptoms disappear.” Another scalper suggested the reporter take a test at a regular medical institution and get a report recognized by the Chinese government.
Justice is never absent
In London, resident Zhou recalled a person around him who had returned to China with a falsified testing report. “He tested positive of COVID- 19 at the Chinese customs soon after landing off the plane,” Zhou told the Global Times. “But I’ve no idea whether he received a legal penalty.” China has explicitly banned forging COVID- 19 testing results, said legal experts. The coronavirus patients who entered China with fake reports, though currently receiving medical treatment, will “very likely face justice through the legal system after recovery,” Meng Bo, a Beijing- based criminal lawyer, told the Global Times.
China has also mandated that anyone who refuses to implement prevention and control measures, allowing the spread of coronavirus, shall face charges, according to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases. Several Chinese embassies and consulates have informed domestic law enforcement departments of the fake report incidents they found. “The offenders will eventually pay for their wrongdoings,” Meng said.