US Will Ease Covid Testing Limits For Chinese Tourists By Friday (Read Details)
The US is planning to lift Covid-19 testing rules for passengers from China as soon as Friday, a person knowledgeable with CNN Tuesday, noting a decline in Covid instances, hospitalizations, and deaths and additional data around the variations that were circulating in China.
As Beijing’s swift relaxation of Covid regulations caused a rise in cases, federal health officials stated in December that starting January 5, the US will require all visitors from China to present a negative Covid test result before traveling to the nation.
The order, according to the source, was implemented in an effort to protect US people after “a huge wave of infections in the PRC” and “a lack of transparency” on the part of Chinese authorities regarding the upsurge.
The news of the loosened travel restrictions was first reported by The Washington Post.
The Biden administration still intends to keep an eye on instances in China and other countries, maintaining a program called Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance (TGS) that asks travelers about information about novel variations.
The testing requirement was implemented in January following China’s controversial and long-standing zero-Covid policy’s dismantling in early December, which caught many people in the country off guard.
US officials voiced alarm at the time over the danger of a novel variety arising in China while they had limited understanding into the surge in infections.
Tuesday’s news also comes after a US Department of Energy assessment that the virus likely developed from a laboratory mishap in China placed further strain on relations between the US and China.
The department’s “low confidence” determination – a minority position among the US intelligence agencies – caused the Chinese Foreign Ministry to urge for the US “to respect science and facts, cease politicizing this matter, stop its intelligence-led, politics-driven origins-tracing.”
However, China has made it more difficult for outside researchers to understand how the pandemic started. China has vehemently denied that the virus emerged from a lab accident.
More information has been added to this story.