Biden’s management plans to avoid requiring negative COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China, a senior management official showed Tuesday, ending a restriction the administration reinstated about two months ago.
Officials plan to end the requirement on Friday, a relative said with the resolution.
The Washington Post first reported on the decision.
In late December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced plans to again require travelers to test negative for the virus before flying to the United States from China, Hong Kong and Macau. the rest of the country of its so-called “zero COVID” policy, leading to a backlog in the number of cases.
At the time, the CDC suggested Americans “reconsider traveling” to China following reports that the physical care formula there had been overwhelmed. The variant may arise from the large wave of infections across the country.
The Chinese government has since declared victory over the virus, state media reported last month. Many countries must also ease their restrictions on the arrival of Chinese travelers, from Japan to Italy.
The variants sequenced and reported by the Chinese government and scientists are all descendants of the Omicron variants, to those observed overseas.
Biden’s management now has evidence that COVID-19 cases and deaths are declining in China, sources familiar with the action said, and also has increased knowledge of the outbreak.
CDC airport surveillance also reported sequencing a handful of COVID-19 cases in foreign travelers arriving from China, according to GISAID database data. The airport’s variant tracking effort will continue to monitor flights from China between other countries, the resources said.
Federal fitness officials have defended their resolve to require negative COVID-19 tests for arriving foreign travelers. However, officials claimed that this would not prevent all cases from entering the country.
A CDC study released last month analyzing data from the original U. S. testing requirement is a report on the original U. S. test requirement. The U. S. Department of Health, which was implemented for all arriving foreign travelers, suggested it could halve the number of COVID-19 cases arriving in the country.
“Certainly, pre-departure testing is leaking and will not prevent all new variants from entering the U. S. “The U. S. is the U. S. Transit of which we seek to slow down,” the CDC’s Henry Walke told a CDC advisory panel in January.