BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese government sharply criticized COVID-19 testing requirements imposed on passengers from China and threatened countermeasures against countries involved, which include the U.S. and several European nations.
“We believe that the entry restrictions adopted by some countries targeting China lack scientific basis, and some excessive practices are even more unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing Tuesday.
READ MORE: European Union tries to coordinate COVID travel policies for China
“We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity,” she said. Mao did not specify what steps China might take.
The comments were China’s sharpest to date on the issue. Australia and Canada this week joined a growing list of countries requiring travelers from China to take a COVID-19 test prior to boarding their flight, as China battles a nationwide outbreak of the coronavirus after abruptly easing restrictions that were in place for much of the pandemic.
Other countries including the U.S., U.K., India, Japan and several European nations have announced tougher COVID-19 measures on travelers from China amid concerns over a lack of data on infections in China and fears of the possibility that new variants may emerge.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne defended the tests. Starting Wednesday, anyone flying from China to France will have to present a negative virus test taken within the previous 48 hours and be subject to random testing on arrival.
“We are in our role, my government is in its role, protecting the French,” Borne said Tuesday on France-Info radio.
The U.K. will require that passengers from China take a COVID test before boarding the plane from Thursday. Transport Secretary Mark Harper said the requirement is for “collecting information” because Beijing isn’t sharing coronavirus data.
Health officials will test a sample of passengers when they arrive in the U.K., but no quarantine is required for those who test positive, he said.
“The policy for arrivals from China is primarily about collecting information that the Chinese government is not sharing with the international community,” Harper told the LBC radio station on Tuesday.
Sweden’s Public Health Agency said Tuesday that it had urged the government to require travelers from China to present a recent negative COVID-19 test.
READ MORE: Travelers from China must test for COVID-19 starting next week, U.S. announces
The statement from the agency comes as Sweden, which has taken over the EU’s rotating presidency, has called a meeting of the EU’s crisis management mechanism for Wednesday to try to agree on a common European line.
The Swedish government “is preparing to be able to introduce travel restrictions. At the same time, we are conducting a dialogue with our European colleagues to get the same rules as possible in the EU,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said in a statement.
Austria, too, plans to test the wastewater of all planes arriving from China for new variants of the coronavirus, the Austria Press Agency reported Tuesday, following a similar announcement by Belgium a day earlier.
Chinese health officials said last week that they had submitted data to GISAID, a global platform for sharing coronavirus data.
The versions of the virus fueling infections in China “closely resemble” those that have been seen in different parts of the world between July and December, GISAID said Monday.
Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses in the Christian Medical College of Vellore in India, said that the information from China, albeit limited, seemed to suggest that “the pattern was holding” and that there wasn’t any sign of a worrisome variant emerging.
Mao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said that health authorities had recently held a video conference with the WHO to exchange views on the current COVID situation, medical treatment, vaccination and other technical issues, and agreed to continue technical exchanges to help end the pandemic as soon as possible.
A senior Hong Kong official also criticized the steps taken by some other countries. Some countries have applied the requirements to passengers from Hong Kong and Macao, both semiautonomous Chinese territories, as well as mainland China.
Hong Kong Chief Secretary Eric Chan said in a Facebook post that the government had written to various consulates on Monday to express its concerns over the “unnecessary and inappropriate” rules.
Some Canadian experts have questioned the effectiveness of the testing. Kerry Bowman, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, said that people can test positive long after entering the country.
WATCH: COVID rapidly spreads in China as government eases strict quarantine rules
The requirement is “not based on science at this point,” he said after Canada announced measures last weekend.
China, which for most of the pandemic adopted a “zero-COVID” strategy that imposed harsh restrictions aimed at stamping out the virus, abruptly eased those measures in December.
Chinese authorities previously said that from Jan. 8, overseas travelers would no longer need to quarantine upon arriving in China, paving the way for Chinese residents to travel.
Associated Press writers John Leicester in Paris, Sylvia Hui in London, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Kanis Leung in Hong Kong and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
‘There is minimal public health risk to New Zealand,’ COVID-19 minister Ayesha Verrall said of visitors from China.
Published On 4 Jan 2023
The New Zealand government said it will not require travellers from China to produce a negative COVID-19 test on arrival, bucking a trend that has seen a number of countries implement testing measures as COVID cases surge in China.
New Zealand’s COVID-19 minister, Ayesha Verrall, said in a statement on Wednesday that a public health risk assessment had concluded visitors from China would not contribute significantly to the number of cases in the country.
“There is minimal public health risk to New Zealand,” the minister said.
“Officials have done a public health risk assessment including working through scenarios of potential case numbers among travellers from China. This confirmed these visitors won’t contribute significantly to our COVID case numbers meaning entry restrictions aren’t required or justified,” the minister said.
Officials will be asking some travellers from China to do voluntary tests to gather more information, which Verrall said reflected New Zealand’s concern alongside that of the World Health Organization (WHO) about China’s lack of information sharing.
New Zealand is also planning to trial testing waste-water on international flights to see if this can replace targeted and voluntary testing of individuals.
A number of countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States are requiring that travellers from China produce a negative COVID test over concerns about the scale of the country’s outbreak and scepticism over Beijing’s health statistics.
China has criticised these moves as discriminatory.
Health officials from the 27-member European Union are due to meet on Wednesday to build a coordinated response to the implications of increased travel from China.
Most EU countries favour pre-departure COVID testing for travellers from China, the European Commission said on Tuesday.
China, which has been largely shut off from the world since the pandemic began in late 2019, will stop requiring inbound travellers to quarantine from January 8. But it will still demand that arriving passengers get tested before they begin their journeys.
Meanwhile, WHO officials met Chinese scientists on Tuesday, after having invited them to present detailed data on viral sequencing and share hospitalisation, deaths and vaccinations data before the meeting.
The WHO will communicate later, probably at a Wednesday news briefing, the result of that meeting. A spokesperson earlier said the agency expected a “detailed discussion” about circulating variants in China and globally.
Infections in China have spiked after the country dropped its strict zero-COVID policy on December 7.
All international arrivals in New Zealand are asked to test if they become symptomatic, with the country providing free tests at the airport.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
JANUARY 03, 2023
Reuters file
BRUSSELS — Most European Union countries favour introducing pre-departure Covid-19 testing for travellers from China, the European Commission said on Tuesday (Jan 3), as Beijing plans to lift travel restrictions on its citizens despite a wave of Covid-19 infections.
The common EU approach emerged after a meeting on Tuesday of the Health Security Committee, an EU advisory body of national health experts from the EU-s 27 countries and chaired by the Commission.
"The overwhelming majority of countries are in favour of pre-departure testing," a Commission spokesman said.
"These measures would need to be targeted at the most appropriate flights and airports and carried out in a coordinated way to ensure their effectiveness," he said.
The Commission on Tuesday prepared a draft proposal for the talks, which included a recommendation for mask wearing on flights from China, wastewater monitoring for aircraft arriving from China, genomic surveillance at airports and increased monitoring and sequencing and increased EU vigilance on testing and vaccination.
"This will now be revised and adopted based on the input of (EU) Member States," the Commission spokesman said, adding more talks on the measures would take place at another meeting of EU health officials on Wednesday afternoon.
The spokesman said all EU countries agreed they needed a coordinated approach to the changing situation in China and to deal with implications of increased travel from China to Europe after China lifts its stringent pandemic polices on Jan 8.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said last week it did not currently recommend measures on travellers from China.
It said the variants circulating in China were already in the European Union, that EU citizens had relatively high vaccination levels and the potential for imported infections was low compared to daily infections in the EU, with healthcare systems currently coping.
ALSO READ: China state media plays down severity of Covid-19 wave before WHO meeting
Source: Reuters
61 visitors from China to South Korea tested
Covid-19 positive on 1st day of new travel
restrictions
Testing for visitors.
Keyla Supharta | January 04, 2023,
South Korea confirmed 61 positive cases of Covid-19 among visitors from China on the first day the country's new travel restrictions came into effect, on Monday (Jan. 2), Yonhap News Agency reported.
Under the new measures, visitors from China have to present a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours before their arrival or a negative antigen test taken within 24 hours before their arrival, followed by a PCR test after arrival.
According to The Korea Times, those who tested positive have to be quarantined at a facility arranged by the Korean government for seven days. The facility can hold up to 100 patients.
61 visitors from China tested positive
On Monday morning (Jan. 2), staff at Incheon airport were seen handing out red name tags to all short-term visitors from China to differentiate them from tourists from other countries, Yonhap reported.
Soldiers donning blue protective outfits then escorted Chinese visitors to a PCR testing centre at Incheon Airport's Terminal 1.
There were no separate routes given to make this trip, so some travellers from Singapore were mistaken for Chinese visitors and given red name tags after standing in the wrong lines.
Those who took the PCR tests had to stay in a waiting room at a nearby transportation centre before their test results came out. The centre can accommodate about 300 people and have benches and simple refreshments.
On the first day that the measures were implemented, 61 Chinese visitors tested positive for Covid despite presenting a negative Covid test before their arrival. 309 people were tested overall.
Frustration towards restrictions
Some people voiced their dissatisfaction with the new measures. A Chinese national waiting for her friend arriving from China expressed her frustration for having to wait at the airport for more than six hours.
A South Korean employee for a South Korean company based in Beijing said his business trip in Seoul was disrupted as he had to quarantine after his PCR test.
"The tougher restrictions may be necessary due to serious Covid-19 situations in China, but it is regrettable that the (South Korean) government has not given prior notice sufficiently in advance," he said.
South Korea will also implement travel measures for travellers from Hong Kong and Macau from Jan. 7, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said. However, they are not required to take a PCR test upon arrival, unlike visitors from China, according to The Korea Times.
China to retaliate against nations who imposed Covid travel curbs
Aside from South Korea, countries like Japan, the United States and Italy announced that arrivals from China have to present a negative Covid test.
The rules came due to mounting concerns about the ongoing surge of Covid cases in the country, as well as the lack of transparency about the situation.
According to Bloomberg, China said it would retaliate against nations who imposed Covid travel restrictions towards Chinese visitors.
“We believe that some countries’ entry restrictions targeting only China lack scientific basis and some excessive measures are unacceptable,” Mao Ning, the spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at a press briefing.
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