There's a Wave of Infections, the United States Implements COVID-19 Test Requirements for Travelers from China

Illustration of health checks during the COVID-19 pandemic at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, China. (Wikimedia Commons/Ptrump)

JAKARTA - The United States will impose mandatory COVID-19 testing on travelers from China, the country's health officials said on Wednesday, joining India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan in taking fresh action, after Beijing's decision to lift its strict zero-COVID policy.

Officials told reporters all air passengers aged 2 and over would require a negative test result no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau, starting January 5.

Passengers who test positive more than 10 days before a flight can provide documentation of recovery in lieu of a negative test, federal officials said.

They attributed the policy change to a lack of information about the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as concerns that an increase in the number of COVID cases in China could result in the development of new variants of the virus.

The United States also expanded its voluntary genomic sequencing program at airports, adding Seattle and Los Angeles to the program. That brings the total number of airports collecting information from positive tests to seven.

In a sudden shift in policy, China this month began dismantling the world's most stringent COVID regime with extensive lockdowns and testing, putting its battered economy on track to fully reopen next year.

The lifting of restrictions followed widespread protests, with COVID spreading largely unchecked and possibly infecting millions of people every day, according to several international health experts.

Beijing has faced international criticism that the official COVID data and death toll do not match the scale of the outbreak.

"We have limited information in terms of what is being shared in relation to the increasing number of cases, hospitalizations and especially deaths. In addition, there has been a decline in testing across China making it difficult to know what the true infection rate is," said a health official. The US is in briefing, reported Reuters December 29.

Given the large number of people in China who have not been exposed to the virus, the introduction of the Omicron variant and China's rollback of the zero-COVID policy, US officials fear there will be a large number of infections leading to hospitalizations and deaths in China, the official said.

Some global health experts say the virus could infect as many as 1 million people a day, and international model groups estimate China could see 2 million deaths or more.

Earlier this week, US officials cited a "lack of transparent data" from China, a persistent complaint from Washington about China's handling of the pandemic, as reason to consider its own travel restrictions.

The US and China's approaches to fighting COVID have been very different during the pandemic. High infection rates in the United States early in the pandemic gave Beijing room to argue that its strict COVID-19 precautionary model was saving lives.

China has struggled to vaccinate its aging population and has yet to allow foreign mRNA vaccines. The overall vaccination rate was above 90 percent, but the rate for adults who had gotten the booster shot fell to 57.9 percent and to 42.3 percent for people aged 80 and over, according to Chinese government data last week.

The Bamboo Curtain country has nine domestically developed COVID vaccines approved for use, but none have been updated to target the highly infectious variant of Omicron.

US officials said in briefings they had offered mRNA vaccines and other support to China, but Chinese officials had said publicly they did not need US assistance at this time.

"We continue to stand by our bid," said an official.

It is known that the United States lifted the requirement for people arriving in the country by air to test negative for COVID-19 in June.