US to Impose COVID-19 Tests for Travellers Coming from China

The government of the United States will impose COVID-19 tests on travellers coming from China, the healthcare authorities of the United States said on December 28, 2022, joining India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan in going to new lengths in the wake of China’s choice to lift COVID-19 restrictions. According to the health officials, all the travellers over the age of 2 years will need a negative COVID-19 test result 48 hours before departing from China, Hong Kong, and Macao starting January 5, 2022.

According to the US officials, the travellers who test COVID-19 positive more than ten days prior to a flight might substitute documentation of recovery for a negative COVID-19 test result. China started dismantling the most stringent COVID-19 regime of lockdowns and extensive testing in a sudden policy shift.

Following widespread protests against the COVID-19 restrictions in the United States, several international health experts believe that COVID-19 is spreading the unchecked, and is likely affecting millions of people in the country each day. China has come under fire from around the world for not matching up the scale of its COVID-19 outbreak with official data and death toll.

According to global health experts, the new variant can infected as much as 1 million people per day and China could see at least 2 million deaths. The US health officials referred to the absence of the straightforward information from China, which is an objection from the US government about China’s treatment of the COVID-19 pandemic, as justification behind thinking about the country’s own movement limitations.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the approaches that China and the United States took to combating COVID-19 were distinct. China was able to argue that its strict COVID-19 restriction model had saved lives because of the high infection rates in the United States at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese government claims that while the country’s overall vaccination rate is greater than 90%, the percentage of adults who have received booster shots drops to 57% for adults and to 42% for those aged 80 and older.