Corona virus out of control: More and more countries are restricting entry from China – but Germany is hesitating
Created: 12/29/2022 11:34 am
Several countries are restricting entry from China for fear of a new virus variant.
Germany is still waiting – and is observing the situation “carefully”.
Munich/Beijing – The omicron tsunami, which is currently gripping China, is also causing increasing concern abroad.
Several countries therefore require travelers from China to have a negative corona test.
In Germany, on the other hand, such measures are not planned, as a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Health announced on request.
"We are monitoring the situation closely and in coordination with our international partners," says Karl Lauterbach's (SPD) ministry.
However, there is no evidence that there is currently a virus variant in China that is “more worrying” than the variants circulating in Germany.
Virus variant BF.7, one of several subvariants of omicron BA.5, is currently predominant in China.
According to experts, people who have built up immune protection against BA.5 through vaccination or infection are also protected against BA.7.
However, the possibility that a completely new variant could develop in China cannot be ruled out.
For example, the Berlin virologist Christian Drosten said in an interview with Die Zeit
in November – i.e. before the start of the current Chinese corona wave
, one could "not rule out" that in China "another leap will happen in terms of evolution".
The prerequisite for this are many infections and an insufficiently protected population – both are the case in China.
However, Drosten restricted: "It may just as well be that nothing happens at all." The virologist Hendrik Streeck also warns against panicking: "There is no new virus," Streeck recently told the
Munich newspaper IPPEN .MEDIA
.
As part of the corona easing, China has announced that it will lift entry restrictions to the People's Republic.
Chinese people can travel abroad again from January 8 without having to quarantine for days on return.
In addition, passports are to be issued again.
The Chinese government stopped issuing new passports for tourist travel shortly after the pandemic began.
As a rule, only urgent business trips and stays abroad for study purposes were approved.
The new regulations had led to a rush to flight booking portals.
When China was still afraid of the world - and not the other way around: The crew of an Air China flight wearing protective suits arrive at the international terminal of Los Angeles Airport in December 2021 (archive image).
© Frederic J Brown/AFP
More and more countries are restricting entry from China
In Italy, air travelers from China have to take a mandatory corona test at the airport after landing.
The authorities began taking appropriate measures at Rome's Fiumicino Airport on Thursday, where a plane from Chongqing landed early in the morning.
Travelers infected with Corona must go into isolation in Italy.
Italy decided on the regulation after worrying numbers were reported from Milan.
On December 26, two planes from China landed in the northern Italian city.
Of the 210 passengers tested, 97 gave a positive corona test, as the health assessor for the Lombardy region, Guido Bertolaso, announced.
From January 5, the United States will also require travelers from the People’s Republic to have a negative corona test, as the US health authority CDC announced on Wednesday.
From then on, air travelers “who are two years old and older and who come from China must take a test no later than two days before their departure from China, Hong Kong and Macau and present a negative test result to the airlines upon departure,” the CDC said.
The US is particularly concerned that rapid transmission of the virus in China could lead to the emergence of new variants.
India, Taiwan and Malaysia have now also tightened the regulations for entry from China.
Japan also ordered to limit the number of flights from China.
At the beginning of December, China surprisingly gave up its zero-Covid policy, since then the number of cases in the country has been rising rapidly: According to internal estimates by the Chinese government, 248 million people were infected with the corona virus in the first three weeks of this month alone.
Before the government of head of state and party leader Xi Jinping announced its reversal in corona policy, protests against the Covid measures had taken place in dozens of cities across the country.
They were the largest demonstrations the country has seen since the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 1989.
(sh/AFP/dpa)
