US to require arrivals from China to provide negative Covid test

The US has announced all travellers from China must provide a negative Covid-19 test to enter the country, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a surge of infections.

From 5 January, all travellers to the US from China will be required to take a Covid test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before boarding their flight. The testing applies to anyone two years and older.

Italy became the first country in Europe to make it obligatory for people arriving from China to be tested for Covid following Beijing moving to reopen its borders.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the UK was not looking at travel restrictions on visitors from China.

While official statistics from China report just three new Covid deaths for Tuesday after Beijing changed the way it recorded Covid-19 deaths to include only those who die from respiratory failure or pneumonia, the British health data modelling firm Airfinity estimates there are now more than 1m cases and more than 5,000 new infections each day.

Experts say the lack of data is likely to be masking the number and severity of cases, and physicians in China are reporting a massive infection and death surge. Howard Bernstein, a Beijing-based doctor, told Reuters that patients are arriving sicker and in greater numbers, and that the ICU ward where he works at the Beijing United Family hospital was full.

The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called on China to share data and conduct relevant studies to help the world understand which Covid variants are circulating. Dwyer said data was crucial because in countries where Covid-19 is out of control, the sheer number of people infected makes it more likely that there will be a rare event that leads to changes in the virus, potentially creating a new variant of concern.

Prolonged lockdowns in China also mean a significant proportion of the population have not been infected with newer variants, and the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines China has relied on appear less effective than mRNA vaccines used elsewhere.