{"id":2758,"date":"2023-03-07T14:34:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T20:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=2758"},"modified":"2023-03-07T14:34:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T20:34:17","slug":"u-s-to-lift-covid-testing-requirements-on-travelers-from-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/03\/07\/u-s-to-lift-covid-testing-requirements-on-travelers-from-china\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. to lift covid testing requirements on travelers from China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Washington Post<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. officials are set to relax coronavirus<\/a> testing requirements on travelers from China as soon as Friday, a decision that comes amid declining covid cases in that country, according to three officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White House declined to comment on the plan, which the officials said was being finalized on Tuesday. National security and health officials reached a decision to roll back the testing requirements this week, and were expected to begin notifying U.S. airlines, Chinese diplomats and others before announcing the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three officials characterized the decision as driven by public health, rather than foreign policy, priorities. Other countries,\u00a0such as Japan<\/a>, that imposed similar requirements on travelers from mainland China have also eased testing rules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. requirement that all travelers 2 and older show a negative test result<\/a> when entering this country went into effect Jan. 5, after China lifted its strict zero-covid policies, and infections and deaths soared there. U.S. officials at the time said they were concerned that the wave of cases sweeping China could spark new variants that might threaten people around the world. The policy was also intended to put pressure on China to more aggressively monitor and share data amid questions about the country\u2019s implausibly low numbers of covid cases and deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing an unprecedented outbreak in China and obviously a lot of concern for the people of China \u2026 the issue that concerns us on top of that is a lack of transparency,\u201d White House coronavirus coordinator Ashish Jha told NPR as the policy took effect<\/a> on Jan. 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese officials the following week\u00a0acknowledged their rising covid death toll<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 revising their official count from 37 deaths to nearly 60,000 on Jan. 14 \u2014 but argued that cases had peaked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. officials say they have been reassured in recent weeks by indications of declining covid deaths and infections in China, although they acknowledged the data is almost certainly a significant undercount. Health analytics firm Airfinity projected<\/a> that China\u2019s covid death toll would peak at 36,000 deaths per day in late January, and U.S. officials believe that the majority of China\u2019s population of 1.4 billion people was infected in the country\u2019s recent covid wave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. officials also had been concerned about China\u2019s lack of transparency around genomic testing to detect emerging variants. In early January, as part of the U.S. response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded<\/a> genomic surveillance of international travelers arriving at several major U.S. airports, which included passengers aboard hundreds of weekly flights from China who voluntarily participated in anonymous nasal swabs and testing wastewater aboard airplanes. Those efforts will continue, officials said Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan to lift testing requirements comes amid ongoing tensions between Chinese and U.S. officials over the covid response and other policies, including the fallout from a recent incident involving a suspected spy balloon. Chinese officials in January had\u00a0threatened \u201ccountermeasures\u201d<\/a>\u00a0against the United States and other countries that imposed covid testing requirements on travelers, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week\u00a0directly accused the United States\u00a0<\/a>of trying to \u201ccontain, encircle and suppress\u201d China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S.-China relations over covid also have been strained by American officials\u2019 continued focus on the \u201clab-leak theory,\u201d which posits that the pandemic began when the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, a city in central China. The Department of Energy and the FBI have both concluded that a lab-leak was the most likely origin of the pandemic, although most other U.S. intelligence agencies favor the theory that the virus naturally \u201cspilled over\u201d from animals to humans. Congressional Republicans are set to hold a hearing on Wednesday\u00a0further probing the virus\u2019 origin<\/a>. Chinese officials have denied the claims and said that the accusation is defamatory.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Post U.S. officials are set to relax coronavirus testing requirements on travelers from China as soon as Friday, a decision that comes amid declining covid cases in that country, according to three officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the plan. The White House declined to comment on the plan, which the officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#COVID testing relaxing for travelers heading to the #USA from #china @washingtonpost","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,7,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-emerging-infectious-diseases","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2759,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions\/2759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}