Since China eased Covid-19-related restrictions that previously made it difficult for its citizens to travel abroad, European and Asian countries have been announcing control measures on the arrival of Chinese tourists at their airports. Such nations fear that the current outbreak of the disease in China could create new variants of the virus and impact their health systems.
France and the United Kingdom announced this Friday (30), for example, that those Chinese who want to enter the two countries will need to present a negative test for Covid-19 before traveling. According to French authorities, the test will be required both on direct flights from China and on those with stopovers. Travelers will also need to wear masks.
The French Ministry of Health reported that no date has yet been set for the introduction of the measures, but a government decree will be published and sent to the member states of the European Union. The British government also has yet to announce when the measure will come into force.
Just this Friday, Spain, South Korea and Israel also imposed controls on passengers coming from China. “We are going to implement controls at our airports, requiring passengers from China to have a negative test or a complete vaccination certificate,” announced Spanish Health Minister Carolina Darias.
South Korea took the same decision, valid until February next year. Israel, for its part, has ordered airlines to only accept foreigners who test negative on board flights from China.
The United States, Italy, India, Japan and Taiwan, among others, had already imposed airport controls on travelers from the Asian nation. The Americans took advantage of the circumstance to accuse China of lack of transparency regarding the real situation of the disease in the country.
On Wednesday (28), authorities in Milan reported that almost half of travelers on two flights departing from the Asian giant were contaminated. According to the Italian Ministry of Health, specialists are analyzing the tests carried out in Milan to identify possible new variants.
This, by the way, is the greatest fear of the international community. The director general of the WHO (World Health Organization), Tedros Adhanom, said that the controls are understandable because “they will serve to protect the population” in the face of “lack of information from China” about the evolution of the disease in the country.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, on the other hand, considered that these tests are unjustified in the European Union, given the level of immunity of the population of the block – according to the platform Our World in Data, linked to the University of Oxford, 75% of the European population already received at least one dose of the vaccine against Covid-19. The agency’s finding, however, should change if a new variant of the virus is discovered in these passengers.
The Chinese government said the precautions taken were the result of “exaggeration, defamation and political manipulation” orchestrated by the Western press. “Since the beginning of the epidemic, China has shared reliable information and data with the international community, including the WHO, in an open and transparent manner,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday.
A day earlier, the Chinese dictatorship reported just 5,515 new cases and one death from Covid. The reliability of the numbers, however, is low, since the regime canceled the performance of generalized tests and changed the criteria for accounting for the number of deaths from the disease.
The reactions of other countries began, mainly, on Tuesday (27), when the Chinese dictatorship announced the resumption of issuing passports to citizens who want to travel abroad for tourism. Today there are no such restrictions anymore, but the new rule will make their return home much easier.
Just this week, China’s National Health Commission announced that, as of January 8, it will no longer require quarantine compliance from travelers arriving in the country.
With this, it is expected that the number of Chinese tourists in Europe and Asia will increase considerably, compared to the rates of the last two years. Due to the Lunar New Year, which begins on the 22nd, millions of Chinese are expected to travel abroad. Generally, the holiday is the busiest in the country; this year, for example, China recorded 1.2 billion trips during the festival.
Data from Chinese travel platform Ctrip showed that, half an hour after the government’s official announcement, searches for popular international destinations increased tenfold. Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and South Korea were the most sought after locations. According to Trip.com, bookings for flights departing from the country increased by 254% on Tuesday compared to the previous day – in 2019, Chinese accounted for 8% of all international travelers, according to a survey by Oxford Economics.
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