HONG KONG, Dec. 30 (WSJ) —Beijing called on foreign governments to abide by scientific principles in setting travel protocols, after the U.S. joined a growing group of countries that are imposing Covid-screening measures on travelers from China.
On Wednesday, the U.S. said it would require travelers arriving from China to show negative Covid test results or documents proving their recovery from a recent infection. Federal health officials cited concerns over a lack of accurate data from Beijing that can be used to detect new coronavirus variants that may be emerging from the outbreaks now raging across the Chinese mainland.
Until early December, China had maintained the world’s strictest Covid-testing regime for nearly three years, and it only recently said it would lift compulsory quarantine for inbound travelers. Some foreign governments have raised concerns over the speed at which Beijing dropped its “zero-Covid” strategy. The about-face came shortly after public protests erupted against the government’s use of mass virus testing and strict lockdowns—which were designed to hunt down and isolate outbreaks, but have also throttled commerce in the world’s second-largest economy.
Amid the shift, Beijing ended mass virus testing and scaled back its reports of new infections. The World Health Organization this week said it needed more information from China to make an accurate assessment of risks from the outbreak.
The U.S. measures mirror pandemic-screening protocols imposed during recent days by several governments in Asia and Europe—including Japan, India and Italy. Washington’s move comes as governments prepare for a surge in Chinese arrivals after Beijing said that from Jan. 8 it will lift border controls that led to the almost three-year collapse in outbound tourism.
Some European Union officials called for joint action in response to the Covid situation in China, and the bloc’s Health Security Committee, an informal advisory body, met Thursday to discuss the matter, according to tweets from an account run by the EU’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety. More meetings are possible in coming days.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is working to facilitate discussions among member countries on a bloc-wide policy, a spokesman said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, which once vocally criticized foreign governments for restricting travel to and from China during the early weeks of the pandemic, offered a more measured response to the latest testing requirements imposed on travelers originating from the country.
“China has always believed that all countries, in adopting Covid-control measures, should do so in a science-based and proportionate manner, without affecting normal people-to-people exchanges,” ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Thursday.
Beijing hopes that all countries can work together in ensuring safe cross-border travel, “safeguard the stability of global industrial supply chains, and contribute to international solidarity in fighting the pandemic and fostering a global economic recovery,” Mr. Wang said.
On Chinese social media, reactions to the new screening protocols appeared varied. Some users condemned what they saw as discriminatory and unscientific measures against China, while others expressed acceptance that other nations were, in some ways, doing what their own government had been doing since early in the pandemic.
“What’s there to criticize? In the past two years when other countries were opening up, were we not strict in our policies of PCR testing and quarantining people who enter our borders?” one user wrote on the popular Weibo microblogging platform. “Which country doesn’t act in its own interests?”
