China has dropped its COVID-19 testing requirements for international arrivals amid the resurgence of infections across the country caused by a new immunity-evading variant.
As of Aug. 30, travelers entering China will no longer be required to take a PRC or antigen test, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin announced on Aug. 28 at a regular press briefing.
Notices by Chinese embassies overseas said that travelers arriving in China won’t be required to provide COVID-19 testing information on health declaration forms.
Airlines won’t check COVID-19 test results before boarding, spokesperson Mao Ning said during the briefing.
The announcement led to mixed reactions on Chinese social media, with some netizens welcoming the change.
“When the testing was needed in the past, I was always afraid that a ‘positive’ result would ruin my trip,” one netizen posted. “Now that there is no need to test, it means that it will be more convenient to return to China for a visit.”
Others expressed concern about possible cross infections and further spread of the disease, since the new strain—EG.5, or “Eris”—is driving up infections in the country.
U.S.-based current affairs commentator Shi Tao says dropping the COVID-19 test requirement for entry will have a detrimental effect on China, given that the new variant is reportedly spreading quickly across the country.
Infections Surge Across China
Eris is the dominant coronavirus subvariant in many provinces in mainland China, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on the social media platform WeChat on Aug. 19.“The proportion of the EG.5 variant among circulating coronavirus strains grew from 0.6 percent in April to 71.6 percent in August,” China’s CDC said.
A subvariant of the Omicron XBB.1.9.2, Eris has spread to at least 52 countries since it was first detected in Indonesia in February. The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated it as a “variant of interest.”
EG.5’s prevalence is mainly due to its enhanced ability to escape immunity, reducing the neutralizing ability of antibodies produced by previous infections, the health agency said.
Beijing’s Municipal Health Commission said on Aug. 15 that reported cases of infectious diseases had risen from the previous week, with COVID-19 infections making up the most cases.
Chinese media outlet Shangguan News reported on Aug. 16 that several medical institutions in Shanghai noted that the number of COVID-19 outpatients had recently jumped by 10 to 15 percent.
Statistics from China’s CDC show that the national COVID-19 positive rate has risen by 13.4 percent since the end of July.
1.87 Million Excess Deaths
The country experienced a mass wave of infections earlier this year after Beijing suddenly abandoned its draconian “zero-COVID” controls and lockdowns that had been in place for three years.The estimated figure was derived from an analysis of obituary data published by three Chinese universities and index searches on Baidu, China’s largest internet search engine.
“Given the absence of comprehensive, publicly available data from China, our novel strategy for estimating excess deaths is both timely and important on this topic of public health concern both in China and internationally and demonstrates how the strategic combination of data sources can provide insights into seemingly opaque public health research questions,” the researchers stated in the study.
