The United States is the latest in a growing number of countries to impose restrictions on visitors from China after Beijing abruptly removed a major impediment to overseas travel despite surging Covid cases at home, reports BSS.
Hospitals across China have been overwhelmed by an explosion of Covid cases following Beijing's decision to lift strict rules that had largely kept the virus at bay but tanked its economy and sparked widespread protests.
On Monday, the country said it would bring an end to mandatory quarantine on arrival -- prompting many jubilant Chinese citizens to make plans to travel abroad.
In response, the United States and a number of other countries announced they would require negative Covid tests for all travellers from mainland China.
"The recent rapid increase in Covid-19 transmission in China increases the potential for new variants emerging," a senior US health official told reporters in a phone briefing.
Beijing has provided only limited data about circulating variants in China to global databases, the official said, and its testing and reporting on new cases has also diminished.
The US move came after Italy, Japan, India and Malaysia announced their own measures in a bid to protect against importing new Covid variants from China.
Beijing has hit out against "hyping, smearing and political manipulation" by the Western media concerning its Covid response.
"Currently China's epidemic situation is all predictable and under control," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a briefing Wednesday.
China still does not allow foreign visitors, however, with the issuance of visas for overseas tourists and students still suspended.
But the lifting of mandatory quarantines sparked a surge in interest in overseas travel by Chinese citizens, who have been largely confined to their country since Beijing pulled down the drawbridge in March 2020.
Italy Wednesday said it would make coronavirus tests for all visitors from China mandatory.
The measure was "essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population", health minister Orazio Schillaci said.
France's president, too, said it had "requested appropriate measures to protect" its citizens, with Paris noting it was closely monitoring "the evolution of the situation in China".
The European Commission is set to meet Thursday to discuss "possible measures for a coordinated approach" by EU states to the explosion of Covid cases in China.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
