Due to the lack of “adequate and transparent” data from China, the US has announced that travellers entering from China, Hong Kong and Macau will be required to do a coronavirus test. The new rules went into effect from 5 January.

The CDC website reads: “Passengers, regardless of citizenship or vaccination status, are required to show a negative COVID-19 test result taken no more than 2 days before their flight departs.

“Those who had COVID-19 in the 90 days before their travel to the United States can instead show documentation of recovery from COVID-19.”

Similar requirements have been put in place by health authorities in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Australia, Spain, Canada and Japan.

*****************

"US public-health officials waited for a week, allowing air travelers from China in without testing, while other countries immediately blocked infected travelers from entering.

In Aerial photos and videos from China show body bags stacked outside hospitals and crematoria, funeral-home parking lots full and hospitals overwhelmed with COVID patients jammed into hallways. In Beijing and Sichuan, more than 50% of the population is infected, according to internal government documents. Yet the Chinese government officially claims there was only one COVID death in all of China Dec. 31, one Dec. 30 and one Dec. 29. That’s in a nation of 1.4 billion people. More dangerous, China is also withholding laboratory evidence about what strains are sickening its population."

*****************

"The surge in COVID cases in China, a country of 1.4 billion, has raised global concerns about the potential emergence of new variants – and of China’s levels of monitoring and sharing data. A number of countries have implemented Covid testing requirements for travelers from China, citing a dearth of data on strains circulating there." https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/05/china/china-covid-outbreak-who-data-intl-hnk/index.html

*****************

Who knows where this story will go? However, it shows that the COVID pandemic is still far from being over. Until other countries start to feel the impact of what is currently happening in China, this is all we really know.

Obviously, the World has still another year of COVID-19 uncertainty ahead of them.