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Transportation China Government United States

US To Require COVID Tests For Travelers Coming From China (politico.com) 85

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will require anyone arriving by air from China to provide a negative Covid test, following a surge of Covid-19 cases across China as Beijing has eased its strict zero-Covid rules. Politico reports: Under the new rules, which will take effect on Jan. 5, anyone two years and older will need to show a negative result from a test taken within two days of their departure from airports in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, administration officials told reporters in a briefing. The move reflects the Biden administration's alarm about the potential spillover of new Covid variants linked to soaring Covid infections in China. The Chinese government ended its draconian Covid-zero policy -- hinged to mass testing, tracing and lockdowns -- on Dec. 7 following mass protests in November fueled by anger about the strategy. According to health authorities in Milan, almost half of the passengers on flights from China were found to have COVID-19. They, too, will begin testing all arrivals from China and will be sequencing the tests to see if there are new variants.
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US To Require COVID Tests For Travelers Coming From China

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  • "We must do something!"
    "This is something..."
    "We must do it!"

    It's not gonna help, but you did something.

    • Re:It's something (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:43PM (#63164648)

      It could help. As long as no exceptions allowed for Americans who visited China, which was a hole in the Trump admin's policy. It's still not great though, going from "draconian" policy to "no" policy in China is just weird.

      They really need to ramp up their vaccination program fast sinceit looks like they're getting similar spikes in severe illness and death similar to the early days in US and EU. And just like some in the US wanted to do, they're fudging numbers so that any co-morbidity doesn't count in their stats, as well as clamping down on hospitals showing "unexplained-but-not-covid" rise in deaths. Sweep it under the rug, nothing to see here. They need their own Fauci who's willing to tell their dictator that he's wrong.

      • Youâ(TM)re a loon. At this point calling this a vaccine is nonsense. Itâ(TM)s effectively a mild therapeutic that neither stops or prevents infection. Simply symptom management at best. Masking has proven to be ineffective and at this point we are seeing that there will be simply people who are more susceptible to it than others who are not. Children are currently the least likely to get it and do not require either a vaccine or masking. If you are still prescribing both then you are a mental defe
    • The dreaded do something disease.
  • Why January 5th? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @04:39PM (#63164510)

    It's nice to see that Covid appears to be completely unimportant now.

    Otherwise why would you wait until January 5th, which is after the current wave in China has peaked and is on the decline?

    Waiting until Jan 5th lets in tens, probably hundreds of thousands of visitors with Covid into the U,S.

    If Covid actually mattered you'd be doing rapid tests for every visitor who originated in China, starting today, and if you couldn't start today blocking or holding all visitors from China until you could start.

    But, as noted, Covid is obviously unimportant to the government, so they are instead opting for a PR move of laxly requiring testing after it's way too late to matter.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @04:51PM (#63164534)
      China doesn't lift their travel ban till Jan 8 so no one will be coming prior to that. regardless The US is a rats nest of Covid anyway.
      • China's travel ban is for Chinese nationals. There are people travelling right now already.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        China doesn't lift their travel ban till Jan 8 so no one will be coming prior to that. regardless The US is a rats nest of Covid anyway.

        Also it takes time for departments to prepare for this kind of thing. You can't just shout "Huzzah, it is done" and expect it to automagically happen at 400+ airports across 2 countries. I'd be surprised if this can be put in place by the 5th of Jan.

    • Re:Why January 5th? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by t.reagan ( 7420066 ) on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:29PM (#63164610)
      Do you even read you own comment history? You are quite the troll. Why worry about something so non lethal? It is unimportant to you, but you need a way to attack the government that you hate, so you spin it. Clean people are clean. Dirty people might die. So what?

      https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

    • The point of this policy isn't public health. The point is to prop up the profits of test manufacturers.

      • My government handout (USPS delivery campaign) Covid test kits are made in China. Try again.
        • Lol, the point of propping up profits isn't to protect the wages of the people in the factory. Its to enrich executives and shareholders, especially the shareholders who can legally buy stock with prior knowledge that a program like this is in the works before it is officially announced to the general public.

    • by Gibgezr ( 2025238 ) on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:52PM (#63164674)

      China still has a ravel ban until Jan 8. They announce the lifting of the ban, and the US announces the beginning of testing before the ban ends. This is normal stuff, and both countries are trying to allow everyone involved time to adjust so that they are ready for this.

      • Did you realize people are coming in from China today or nah?

        That's only for Chinese nationals.

        Did you miss the part of the SUMMARY where it said:

        According to health authorities in Milan, almost half of the passengers on flights from China were found to have COVID-19.

        How are the people in Milan finding that if flights are not coming in from China with people on them?

        It doesn't matter if they are Chinese citizens, what matters is if people are coming from a known very hot spot for Covid. That's the whole re

    • Funny how when trump did it, he was a xenophobic racist but the walking dementia riddled nutsack-in-chief gets no such criticism. You guys are POS.
      • Trump was right to do this when he did, and acted as fast as was reasonable at the time since we had little concrete information.

        Now we know all about Covid and the ban hammer should have come down instantly, not a week or two later...

        So I'm very much criticizing the current administration and not Trump at all...

  • gotta ask why? outside of China US is probably the most covid infested country in the world with zero control of it, why would they care whether they had one more case or not?
  • Let us hope that it is only low vaccination rate, low homegrown vaccine efficacy, and lack of infection immunity [slashdot.org] that are the reasons for the current surge in China.

    The last thing we need is yet another Delta-like variant that stresses hospitals more (along with the flu and RSV) and causes another round of high number of deaths ...

    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      Let us hope that it is only low vaccination rate, low homegrown vaccine efficacy, and lack of infection immunity [slashdot.org] that are the reasons for the current surge in China.

      I've yet to see evidence that the spike in infections is because of any of those things. If their previous lockdown policy did work, then this is simply the combinations of Delta and Omicron spikes we saw elsewhere in the world.

      Assuming their health care system no better than the US, then we should expect to see 430 million cases and 4.6 million dead within a month or two.

  • Americans are vaxed+boosted or have already had it. Plus, latest variants may be more contagious but are less severe. Let them come.
  • I doubt these tests are entirely accurate. Covid morphs all the time. Also, an infected person may not test positive if that person has only been infected for a short time.

    Far too many variables. Safest thing to do is to ban all travel to/from China. Except for, maybe, a few extraordinary cases, and that should take a very special approval process.

"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..." -- Badger comics

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