Coronavirus travel restrictions against discriminatory state media for Chinese visitors

BEIJING/MADRID (Reuters) – Chinese state media said COVID-19 testing requirements imposed by a growing number of countries on travelers from China were “discriminatory” and intended to undermine China’s reopening, even though a wave of infections has erupted in the country. all over the country.

After keeping its borders nearly closed for three years, imposing a strict regime of lockdowns and draconian testing, China abruptly reversed course toward living with the virus on Dec. 7, and infections have spread rapidly in recent weeks.

Some places were surprised by the scale of the outbreak in China and expressed skepticism about Beijing’s COVID statistics, with South Korea and Spain on Friday joining the United States, India and other countries in mandating COVID tests on travelers from China.

Malaysia said it will screen all international arrivals for fever.

“The real intention is to sabotage China’s three-year effort to control COVID-19 and attack the country’s system,” the state-run Global Times said in an article late Thursday, calling the restrictions “baseless” and “discriminatory.”

China will stop requiring inbound travelers to go into quarantine from January 8, but will still require a negative PCR test result within 48 hours before departure.

the exams

A day after European Union health officials failed to agree on a common course of action, Spain followed in Italy’s footsteps by becoming the second of 27 member states of the bloc to require tests for travelers from China.

“Nationally, we will implement airport controls that will require all passengers arriving from China to show a negative COVID-19 test or evidence of a complete vaccination course,” said Health Secretary Carolina Darias.

Over the past days, officials in France, Germany and Portugal have said that they see no need at the present time to impose new restrictions, while Austria has stressed the economic benefits of the return of Chinese tourists to Europe.

Global spending for Chinese visitors reached more than $250 billion a year before the pandemic.

The United States has raised concerns about potential mutations of the virus as it sweeps through the world’s most populous country, as well as about data transparency in China.

The agency told Reuters that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is studying wastewater sampling from international aircraft to track any emerging new variants.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO needed more information to assess the recent increase in the number of infections in China, without taking a position on the issue of travel tests.

Meanwhile, the German ambassador to Beijing, Patricia Flor, said on Twitter that a vaccination campaign against the emerging corona virus for German citizens in China had begun its trial phase.

A shipment of 11,500 doses from BioNTech (22UAy.DE) The vaccine arrived last week, enough to give one shot to every half of the 20,000 or so German citizens who reside in China.

Excess mortality

The lifting of restrictions in China, after widespread protests against them in November, has flooded hospitals and funeral homes across the country, where scenes of people dripping in vein on the side of the road and hearing lines outside crematoriums sparked public alarm.

Health experts say China has been ill-prepared for the shift in policies that President Xi Jinping has long championed.

In December, bids placed by hospitals for key equipment such as ventilators and patient monitors were two to three times higher than in previous months, according to a Reuters review suggesting hospitals were scrambling to fill shortfalls.

Experts say elderly people in rural areas may be particularly vulnerable due to insufficient medical resources. The celebration of the Lunar New Year next month, when hundreds of millions will travel to their hometowns, will raise the stakes.

China, with a population of 1.4 billion, reported one new coronavirus death Thursday, as it did the day before — numbers that don’t match the experience of other countries after they reopened.

China’s official death toll is 5,247 since the pandemic began, compared to more than 1 million deaths in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million people, has recorded more than 11,000 deaths.

UK-based health data company Airfinity said Thursday that about 9,000 people in China likely die each day from COVID. She added that the cumulative deaths in China since December 1 have likely reached 100,000, and the total number of infections has reached 18.6 million.

China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyu said on Thursday that the difference between the number of deaths in the current wave of infections and the death rate for the same period in epidemic-free years will be studied to calculate “excess deaths” and measure any estimate lower than expected. of deaths from COVID-19.

Economic crises

The world’s second largest economy is expected to slow further in the near term as factory workers and shoppers fall ill.

Consumers may need time to regain their confidence and willingness to spend after losing income during lockdowns, while the private sector may have used expansion funds to cover losses incurred due to restrictions.

However, it appears that Chinese airlines will be the first winners in reopening.

Additional reporting by John Revell in Zurich and Kirsti Knoll in Berlin. Written by Marius Zaharia and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Simon Cameron Moore

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.