Meanwhile, Beijing has abruptly decided to remove all restrictions on overseas travel despite surging Covid cases at home.
BEIJING: The United States is the latest among a growing number of countries to impose restrictions on visitors from China, a report in the Deccan Chronicle, says
Meanwhile, Beijing has abruptly decided to remove all restrictions on overseas travel despite surging Covid cases at home.
Hospitals across China have been overwhelmed by an massive surge of Covid cases following Beijing’s decision to lift strict rules that had largely kept the virus at bay but tanked its economy and sparked widespread protests.
On Monday, December 26, the country said it would bring an end to mandatory quarantine on arrival — prompting many jubilant Chinese citizens to make plans to travel abroad.
In response, the United States and a number of other countries announced they would require negative Covid tests for all travellers from mainland China.
“The recent rapid increase in Covid-19 transmission in China increases the potential for new variants emerging,” a senior US health official told reporters in a phone briefing.
Beijing has provided only limited data about circulating variants in China to global databases, the official said,
The US move comes after Italy, Japan, India and Malaysia announced their own steps to protect against importing new Covid variants from China.
Beijing has hit out against “hyping, smearing and political manipulation” by the Western media concerning its Covid response.
“Currently China’s epidemic situation is all predictable and under control,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a briefing Wednesday.
China still does not allow foreign visitors, however, with the issuance of visas for overseas tourists and students still suspended.
Italy has said it would make coronavirus tests for all visitors from China mandatory.
“The recent rapid increase in Covid-19 transmission in China increases the potential for new variants emerging,” a senior US health official told reporters in a phone briefing.
The measure was “essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population”, health minister Orazio Schillaci said.
France’s president, too, said it had “requested appropriate measures to protect” its citizens.
The European Commission is set to meet Thursday to discuss “possible measures for a coordinated approach” by EU states to the explosion of Covid cases in China.
Bodies piling up
On the frontlines of China’s Covid wave, hospitals are battling surging cases that have hit the elderly and vulnerable hardest.
However, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) last week said that it would no longer release an official daily Covid death toll.
But with the end of mass testing — and China’s decision to reclassify Covid deaths in a move analysts said would dramatically downplay the fatalities — those numbers were no longer believed to reflect reality.
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