Travelers planning on coming to the United States from China must have a negative COVID test at least two days before entering the U.S, the CDC said on Wednesday.
It isn’t just the explosion of positive tests in China that has the CDC worried. It’s the “lack of adequate and transparent” data being reported by the Chinese government that has government health bureaucrats extremely concerned.
Right now, China is a gigantic Petri dish and the chances of a new variant emerging out of the country’s opening to the world for the first time in more than two years are pretty good.
But China’s game plan hasn’t changed. Minimize the PR damage while feigning full cooperation. It’s a recipe for disaster.
The new restrictions, which take effect after midnight on Jan. 5, apply to every airline passenger 2 years or older regardless of vaccination status, according to the CDC.
Passengers will need a negative test, such as a PCR or antigen test, no more than two days before they leave China, Hong Kong or Macau.
People who recently recovered from COVID-19 may also show that documentation instead of a negative test result, the CDC said.
It’s the lack of data and the lack of cooperation from the Chinese government that is causing concern around the globe. The bug has had two years to marinate in an admittedly large population, but a closed one nonetheless. If a variant does emerge, it’s likely to be even less lethal than the current variants at large. But nature has a terrible way of surprising us, and we simply can’t take anything for granted.
“Right now the pandemic situation in China is not transparent,” Wang Pi-Sheng, the head of Taiwan’s epidemic command center, told The Associated Press. “We have a very limited grasp on its information, and it’s not very accurate.”
Chinese health officials have said the current outbreak is being driven by versions of the omicron variant that have also been detected elsewhere, and a surveillance system has been set up to identify any potentially worrisome new versions of the virus. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at China’s Center for Disease Control, said Thursday that China has always reported the virus strains it has found in a timely way.
“We keep nothing secret,” he said. “All work is shared with the world.”
Would you buy a used car from that man?
German Health Ministry spokesperson Sebastian Guelde said authorities there have “no indication that a more dangerous variant has developed in this outbreak in China,” but they are monitoring the situation. The European Union is also assessing the situation, though its executive branch noted that a prevalent variant in China is already active in Europe
“You can’t conduct the lunacy of ‘zero-COVID’ lockdowns for such a long period of time… and then suddenly unleash a multitude of the infected from a caged China to the world,” risking major outbreaks elsewhere, Yu said in an email to AP.
Fortunately, most people in the West have been exposed to at least two variants of the coronavirus and have built up some natural immunity. But given China’s continuing reluctance to cooperate in searching for COVID’s origins, and now this obstruction in refusing to help public health authorities prepare for an outbreak of a possible new variant, there has to be some way to sanction Beijing for its arrogance.
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