China on Monday said it would take reciprocal countermeasures against countries that have imposed entry restrictions on travellers from China, state media Global Times reported.
The country’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin during a press briefing on Monday said China urges the US to be transparent in sharing data on the currently prevalent Omicron XBB variant in the US. China on Sunday relaxed its COVID management measures from Class A to Class B. The country resumed cross-border travel and business starting Sunday, according to Global Times.
Entry restrictions were, however, put on travellers from China by a few countries, including the US.
Wenbin, in response to the measures, said the country will impose countermeasures.
Wang said that many countries welcomed China’s Class B management of COVID but a few countries announced restrictions on travellers from China.
Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg recently discouraged non-essential trips to China as the country struggles with a rapid surge in COVID cases post the Chinese government’s abandonment of its zero-COVID policy, reported Singapore based The Straits Times newspaper.
“We currently discourage non-essential trips to China. The reason is a peak in COVID infections and an overwhelmed health system,” the German foreign ministry said on its official Twitter handle.
Luxembourg’s foreign ministry in a statement said: “Luxembourg is aligning itself with the German travel advisory and is currently advising against non-essential travel to China.”
Recently, ABC News reported that amidst a record increase in COVID infections in China, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the US would require a negative COVID test from all travellers arriving in the country from China as well as those from Hong Kong and Macau.
“CDC is announcing this step to slow the spread of COVID in the United States during the surge in COVID cases in the People’s Republic of China given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC,” the CDC said in a statement.
The CDC said that starting from January 5, the United States would require international travellers coming from China to test negative for COVID before entering the country.
The Hong Kong Post reported that China is no longer adopting preventive measures to stop the country’s COVID spread and is allowing Chinese nationals to move and travel as per their wishes.
This could result in a 2020-like situation when the pathogen spread across the world from Wuhan, the Hong Kong Times report said.
According to some media reports, China is trying to get its entire population infected by Covid so that it could achieve herd immunity and refocus on economic development.
However, the situation on the ground, according to reports, is chaotic.
According to reports, the ongoing Covid wave in China has seen Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, and other urban areas struggling to contain the outbreak, with hospitals overwhelmed and mortuaries full.