US to require negative Covid tests for travelers from China

Amid concerns about a coronavirus outbreak in Beijing, the Biden administration announced the policy change for those entering the United States from the China, including Hong Kong and Macau.

The Biden administration, fearing that a surge of coronavirus infections in Beijing could spawn a new, more dangerous variant, announced on Wednesday that it would force travelers from China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to present negative Covid-19 tests before entering the United States.

Requirement will come into effect on Jan. 5, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which made the announcement. Agency officials say they are deeply concerned about China's lack of transparency about its outbreak — and, in particular, its failure to track and sequence the variants and subvariants circulating within its borders.

C.D.C. officials said the testing requirement will apply to air passengers regardless of their nationality and vaccination status. It will also apply to travelers from China entering the United States through a third country, or connecting through the United States to other destinations. Italy and Japan have already imposed similar restrictions, and India has imposed negative Covid-19 test reports and random screening at airports for passengers arriving from China, Japan, South Korea, from Hong Kong and Thailand.

But as they did when President Donald J. Trump imposed pandemic travel restrictions, some experts are are asked if the testing requirement would do any good – especially given the increase in the number of cases in some parts of the United States. In the northeast, scientists say the spread of the virus is being fueled by a subvariant of Omicron, XBB, which appears to be spreading faster than those linked to the dominant variant in Beijing.

"I understand politically why this needs to be done, but ultimately it's a false sense of security that we're really slowing down transmission," said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

But President Biden's coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Ashish K. Jha disputed the comparison with how Mr. Trump restricted the entry of foreigners from China at the start of the pandemic.

Biden administration policy "is not not a travel ban at all," Dr Jha said in an emailed statement after the ad. lication of this article. online. On the contrary, he called it a “cautious” testing requirement for all travelers from China, not just nationals of that country, which is necessary “because China – unlike virtually every other major countries – does not update the global database of Covid cases and Covid variants."

The Covid epidemic in China has worsened in recent days, with local governments reporting hundreds of thousands of infections a day.Videos obtained by The New York Times show sick patients crowded into hospital hallways.But the situation is difficult to track in real time as China does not publish reliable Covid data.

The C.D.C. also announced Wednesday that it is expanding a voluntary genomics surveillance program that searches for new variants in anonymous swabs taken from international travelers in s major US airports to include Los Angeles and Seattle.

The Biden administration has offered vaccines and other Covid-19 support to China, but this aid was rejected, federal officials said. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken also spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi shortly before Christmas and “underlined the importance of transparency for the international...