US, Italy and other nations reintroduce negative Covid test requirements for travellers from China

From 5 January, all travellers over two years old to the US from China will be required to take a Covid test no more than 48 hours before travel, and provide a negative test before boarding their flight. Countries that have instituted similar rules include Japan, Malaysia, India, South Korea and Taiwan.

In Europe, Italy is the first country to tighten its restrictions and reintroduce requirements of negative Covid tests before admitting Chinese citizens into the country. Orazio Schillaci, the Italian health minister, said the ‘measure is essential to guarantee the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population’. Prior to the introduction of the mandatory tests for all, health authorities in Rome and Milan began testing travellers arriving from China. One in two were found to have Covid-19.

Australian infectious diseases expert Prof Dominic Dwyer highlighted the speed with which Chinese authorities had relaxed their restraints on population movement, going from a zero-Covid approach to almost complete freedom of travel in just a few weeks, and also pointed out that the world doesn’t know which variant is currently circulating in China. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, has called on China to share data and conduct relevant studies to help the world understand which Covid variants are circulating.