The abrupt end this month of the “zero Covid” policy in China as the country experiences an explosion in cases has raised concern in several countries, including France, which is considering “protective measures”.
Beijing’s announcement of the end of the “zero Covid” policy on January 8 was received with great concern from several countries, including France, as China faces the largest wave of contamination in the world.
“Emmanuel Macron has already asked the government to think about appropriate measures to protect the French in this context and to see both at national and European level”, indicates this Wednesday the Elysée to BFMTV.
“For the moment he asked to look and prepare proposals for the next few days”, specifies the presidency of the Republic.
Italy, Japan, United States take measures
Italy has already announced mandatory testing for all travelers from Chinawhile the United States reflect on measures of the same type. “The international community is increasingly concerned about the current outbreaks of Covid-19 in China and the lack of transparent data, including viral genomic sequence data, reported by the PRC,” US officials said, under anonymous, in reference to the People’s Republic of China.
For its part, Japan will restore from this Friday the mandatory PCR tests for travelers from mainland China. The island of Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, also announced that it would carry out virus checks on travelers from the mainland.
Epidemic wave “impossible” to measure
Beijing’s sudden reversal in health policy has ended nearly three years of mass testing, lockdowns and prolonged quarantines that have seriously disrupted the country’s supply chains as well as China’s economy, the world’s second largest. . All travelers arriving in China had to observe a mandatory quarantine since March 2020.
First lasting three weeks, it was reduced to just one in June, then to five days last month. The abolition of this rule in January will also mean the reclassification of Covid-19 as a category B infectious disease, allowing authorities to relax controls. This Tuesday, the Chinese migration authorities also announced the gradual resumption of the granting of passports for “tourism” and “visits of friends abroad” from January 8.
Chinese authorities have acknowledged that the extent of the epidemic wave is now “impossible” to measure and have reduced the number of criteria for attributing a death to Covid. The Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control on Wednesday listed 5,231 new contaminations and three deaths from the coronavirus nationwide, figures probably underestimated because the sick no longer need to declare themselves.
