China’s “zero COVID” insurance policies had stored China’s an infection fee low however fuelled public frustration and crushed financial progress.
In a press release explaining the restrictions, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited the surge in infections and what it mentioned was a scarcity of enough and clear info from China, together with genomic sequencing on the viral strains circulating within the nation.
“These data are critical to monitor the case surge effectively and decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern,” the CDC mentioned.
Some scientists are involved the COVID-19 surge in China may unleash a brand new coronavirus variant on the world which will or might not be much like those circulating now.
That’s as a result of each an infection is one other probability for the virus to mutate.
“What we want to avoid is having a variant enter into the US and spread like we saw with delta or Omicron,” mentioned Matthew Binnicker, director of medical virology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
But the CDC’s motion could also be much less about stopping a brand new variant from crossing US borders and extra about rising strain on China to share extra info, mentioned Dr David Dowdy, an infectious illness epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, including he hopes the restrictions “aren’t kept in place longer than they need to be.”
“I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact in slowing the spread of COVID-19,” Dowdy said.
“We have a whole lot of transmission of COVID-19 here within our borders already.”
Beginning January 5, all travellers to the US from China will be required to take a COVID-19 test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before boarding their flight.
The testing applies to anyone two years and older, including US citizens.
Other countries have taken similar steps in an effort to keep infections from spreading beyond China’s borders.
Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travellers from China, and Malaysia announced new tracking and surveillance measures.
India, South Korea and Taiwan are requiring virus tests for visitors from China.
Lunar New Year, which begins January 22, is usually China’s busiest travel season, and China announced Tuesday it will resume issuing passports for tourism for the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
The US action is a return to requirements for some international travellers.
The Biden administration lifted the last of such mandates in June. At that time, the CDC continued to recommend that people boarding flights to the US get tested close to departure time and not travel if they are sick.
Early in the pandemic, the US barred entry to foreigners travelling from China, weeks after the virus first emerged there three years ago.
Americans were allowed to return home and flights from China were funnelled to selected airports where passengers were screened for illness. But the virus already was spreading in the US among people with no travel history.
Answers to essentially the most generally Googled questions on COVID-19
