Covid: As China witnesses record high Covid cases, the United States will now require a negative test from travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau, reported news agency ABC News. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the announcement on Sunday.
In a statement, CDC said, "CDC is announcing this step to slow the spread of Covid in the United States during the surge in COVID-19 cases in the People's Republic of China given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC," the CDC said in a statement.
When will this come into existence?
According to the statement, the United States will require travellers from China to test negative to Covid before entering the country. Deaths attributed to Covid in China have increased to 9,000 people per day, according to a data firm, reported news.com.au, an Australia-based publication.
The news.com.au report also said, "British-based research firm Airfinity has doubled the number of people it estimates are dying from Covid in China as the number of infections soar. It comes after Beijing lifted draconian zero-Covid health measures in November that had been in place for years."
Which countries require a negative Covid test from Chinese travellers?
Notably, countries like Australia, Canada, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Japan and India announced mandatory Covid testing for travellers from China amid a 'rapidly developing situation.'
Earlier, Italian officials said that nearly half of passengers on two flights from China to Milan tested positive for the virus on Wednesday. Public health experts told ABC News that while they understand why the US announced the measure, it is not a viable long-term solution. "One can imagine that the plane, if people are traveling and they have Covid and they don't know it, would be safer," Dr Peter Chin-Hong told ABC News.
"So, I guess the fear, and the rationale for having this kind of travel restriction is to prevent scary variants from coming in, or at least to delay it."
Covid cases on the rise in China
China has not reported any evidence of new variants but has also been accused of underreporting case counts, hospitalizations and deaths. For example, China's National Health Commission says the country has only seen 5,241 Covid deaths since the pandemic began, while data from Johns Hopkins suggests China has had over 16,000 deaths since the pandemic started.
(With inputs from ANI)
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