TESTING CHINA’S FLYERS
US screening for COV
Travelers flying from China to the United States will be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test before they board starting Jan. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday.
Passengers 2 years old and up will be required to show a negative PCR or antigen test taken within two days at the gate before departure, the CDC said.
The rule will also apply to travelers coming from China to the US via a third country, and only exempts those who tested positive for the bug at least 10 days before the flight and “can provide documentation of recovery . . . in lieu of a negative test result.”
The move comes after the easing of China’s strict “zeroCOVID” policies earlier this month, which has led to the country’s largest coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic.
As a sign of how fast COVID has now spread in China, nearly half of the passengers on two separate flights this week from China to Milan tested positive for the virus.
On the first flight, 35 out of 92 passengers tested positive, while on the second, 62 out of 120 were infected, according to Lombardy region’s health chief, Guido Bertolaso.
Some 37 million people may have contracted COVID-19 in China on Dec. 20 alone, and as many as 248 million people — nearly 18% of China’s population — came down with the virus in the first 20 days of December.
US officials opted to reinstate the testing requirement for travelers from China due to a “lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from” the country, the CDC release said.
“These data are critical to monitor the case surge effectively and decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern,” the release added.
Return of the mandates
This is the first time the Biden administration has reinstated mandatory COVID mandates on a foreign country since lifting the last similar measures in June, although the government has continued to recommend preflight testing.
Other countries have taken similar steps to filter travelers from China in recent weeks in an effort to keep infections from spreading beyond China’s borders.
Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travelers from China, and Malaysia announced new tracking and surveillance measures. India, South Korea and Taiwan are also requiring virus tests for visitors from China.