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BEIJING , China – The United States joined nations imposing Covid tests on travellers from China after Beijing dropped foreign travel curbs despite surging cases, but the EU’s health agency said Thursday such measures weren’t warranted in the bloc.
The head of the World Health Organization, however, said the restrictions some countries were introducing were “understandable” given the lack of information out of Beijing.
Hospitals across China have been overwhelmed by an explosion of infections following Beijing’s decision to lift strict rules that had largely kept the virus at bay but tanked the economy and sparked widespread protests.
China said this week it would end mandatory quarantine on arrival, prompting many Chinese to make plans to travel abroad.
In response, the United States and several 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.
Beijing has provided only limited information to global databases about variants circulating in China, the official said, and its testing and reporting on new cases have diminished.
The US move came after Italy, Japan, India and Malaysia announced their own measures in a bid to avoid importing new variants from China.
The European Union’s health agency said Thursday it believed the EU-wide introduction of mandatory Covid screenings for travellers from China was currently “unjustified”.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) pointed to the “higher population immunity in the EU/EEA, as well as the prior emergence and subsequent replacement of variants currently circulating in China”.
