U.S. Announces New Covid Test Requirements for Travelers From China - The New York Times

Politics|U.S. Announces New Covid Test Requirements for Travelers From China

The Biden medication announced connected Wednesday that travelers from China, Hong Kong and Macau indispensable contiguous antagonistic Covid-19 tests earlier entering the United States, a determination that it says is intended to dilatory the dispersed of the coronavirus. The request volition instrumentality effect connected Jan. 5.

The announcement, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came amid increasing interest implicit a surge of cases successful China and the country’s deficiency of transparency astir the outbreak there.

C.D.C. officials said the request for investigating volition use to aerial passengers careless of their nationality and vaccination status. It volition besides use to travelers from China who participate the United States done a 3rd country, and to those who link done the United States to different destinations.

China’s Covid outbreak has been worsening successful caller days, with section governments reporting hundreds of thousands of infections a day. Videos obtained by The New York Times show sick patients crowding infirmary hallways. But the concern is hard to way successful existent clip due to the fact that China does not merchandise reliable Covid data.

After 3 years of insisting connected a “zero Covid” policy, China made an abrupt turnabout successful aboriginal December and lifted that policy, aft wide protests implicit lockdowns that threatened the ruling Communist Party. Since then, determination has been an detonation of cases successful Beijing.

Scientists successful Hong Kong have reported that an Omicron subvariant known arsenic BF.7 has been liable for the Beijing outbreak. That variant is simply a sublineage of BA.5, which has until precocious been ascendant successful the United States. But BF.7, portion contiguous successful the United States for months, has not shown signs of outcompeting different versions of Omicron here.

The C.D.C. estimated that BF.7 made up 4 percent of cases successful precocious December, and that it had go little communal since November. Other Omicron subvariants that scientists judge whitethorn beryllium much adept astatine evading existing immune responses are presently ascendant successful the United States.

Scientists said successful caller days that, for present astatine least, the variant that fuels China’s outbreak whitethorn not needfully beryllium the 1 that astir efficaciously sidesteps immune responses. Because truthful fewer radical successful China person antecedently been infected with versions of Omicron, immoderate of the highly contagious Omicron subvariants that person been circling the satellite lately could instrumentality disconnected there.

In a colonisation similar China’s with truthful small existing immunity from infections, the ascendant variant whitethorn not needfully beryllium the 1 that is champion astatine getting astir those immune responses, but simply the 1 that happens to drawback fire, they said.

“In immoderate sense, immoderate took disconnected archetypal is astir apt going to beryllium ascendant there,” said James Trauer, an adept connected modeling infectious diseases astatine Monash University successful Melbourne, Australia.

This is simply a processing story. Check backmost for updates.