The United States will impose mandatory Covid-19 on travelers from China, U. S. fitness officials said Wednesday, joining India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan in taking new measures following Beijing’s resolve to lift strict zero-Covid policies.
Officials told reporters that, starting Jan. 5, all air passengers over the age of two will want a negative verification result no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau.
Passengers who tested positive more than 10 days before a flight can provide documentation of recovery in lieu of the negative result, federal officials said.
In an abrupt shift in policy, China this month began dismantling the world’s strictest regime of lockdowns and comprehensive Covid testing, putting its ailing economy on the path to a full reopening next year.
The lifting of restrictions, following widespread protests opposing them, means covid is spreading largely out of control and likely infecting millions of people per day, according to some foreign fitness experts.
Beijing has faced foreign complaints that its official knowledge of Covid and death count are incompatible with the scale of its outbreak.
Some global fitness experts have said the virus can infect up to a million people a day, and teams of foreign models have predicted that China could see two million or more deaths.
Earlier this week, U. S. officials cited China’s “lack of transparent data,” a persistent complaint from Washington about China’s handling of the pandemic, as an explanation for its own travel restrictions.
The US and Chinese approaches to combating covid have been markedly different to the pandemic.
High infection rates in the U. S. at the beginning of the pandemic they gave Beijing a chance to argue that its style of strict Covid prevention measures had saved lives.
China is struggling to vaccinate its elderly population and does not yet have legal foreign mRNA vaccines. Its overall vaccination rate is above 90 percent, but the rate among adults who received boosters drops to 57. 9 percent and 42. 3 percent for others 80 and older, the Chinese government said. Knowledge last week showed.
The country has nine locally evolved Covid vaccines approved for use, but none have been updated to target the highly infectious variant of Omicron.
In June, the U. S. The U. S. Department of Health and Prevention rescinded a 17-month requirement that other people arriving in the country by air test negative for covid-19. It continues to require that as many non-U. S. citizens get vaccinated against covid in the United States.