Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ BEIJING: France joined the growing list of nations imposing Covid-19 tests on travellers from China after Beijing dropped foreign travel curbs despite surging cases and amid questions about its data reporting.
Negative Test for Travellers
South Korea, Spain, and Israel also said they should require proof of a negative test for travellers leaving China, and UK media reported that Britain would soon join them.
Despite the hospitals and morgues being overwhelmed and global concern over the low official figures on infections and deaths, China insisted Friday that it had been transparent in sharing its Covid-19 information.
On Wednesday, a senior US health authority said Beijing had provided only limited information to international databases about variants circulating in China, and its testing and reporting on new cases had diminished.
On Thursday, Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus World Health Organization urged China to be more forthcoming and added it was “understandable” that some countries had introduced restrictions in response to its Covid-19 surge.
national disease control body in China said that there were about 5,500 new local cases and one death Friday but, with the end of mass testing and the narrowing of the criteria for what counts as a Covid-19 fatality, those numbers are no longer believed to reflect reality.
France, Spain, Israel and South Korea have joined Italy, Japan, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and the United States in requiring negative Covid-19 tests for all travellers from mainland China, in a bid to avoid importing new virus variants.
