By KEN MORITSUGU and HUIZHONG WU
Dec 29,2022
A masked traveller arrives at the international flight check in counter at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. Moves by the U.S., Japan and others to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
BEIJING (AP) — Moves by several countries to mandate
COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern
that new
variants could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and that the
government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough.
There have been no reports of new variants to date, but
China has been accused of not being forthcoming about the virus since it first
surfaced in the country in late 2019. The worry is that it may not be sharing
data now on any signs of evolving strains that could spark fresh outbreaks
elsewhere.
The U.S., Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Italy have
announced testing requirements for passengers from China. The U.S.
cited both the surge in infections and what it said was a lack of
information, including genomic sequencing of the virus strains in the country.
Authorities in Taiwan and Japan have
expressed similar concern.
“Right now the pandemic situation in China is not
transparent,” Wang Pi-Sheng, the head of Taiwan’s epidemic command center, told
The Associated Press. “We have a very limited grasp on its information, and
it’s not very accurate.”
The island will start testing everyone arriving from China on
Jan. 1, ahead of the expected return of about 30,000 Taiwanese for the Lunar
New Year holiday later in the month. The new Japanese rules, which restrict
flights from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao to designated airports
beginning Friday, are already disrupting holiday travel plans.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted
Thursday that many countries have not changed their policies for travelers from
China and said that any measures should treat people from all countries
equally.
Every new infection offers a chance for the coronavirus to
mutate, and it is spreading rapidly in China. Scientists can’t say whether that
means the surge will unleash a new mutant on the world — but they worry that
might happen.
Chinese health officials have said the current outbreak is
being driven by versions of the omicron variant that have also been detected
elsewhere, and a surveillance system has been set up to identify any
potentially worrisome new versions of the virus. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist
at China’s Center for Disease Control, said Thursday that China has always
reported the virus strains it has found in a timely way.
“We keep nothing secret,” he said. “All work is shared with
the world.”
German Health Ministry spokesperson Sebastian Guelde said
authorities there have “no indication that a more dangerous variant has
developed in this outbreak in China,” but they are monitoring the situation.
The European Union is also assessing the situation, though its executive branch
noted that a prevalent variant in China is already active in Europe.
More broadly, World Health Organization Director-General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the body needs
more information on the severity of the outbreak in China,
particularly on hospital and ICU admissions, “in order to make a comprehensive
risk assessment of the situation on the ground.”
China rolled
back many of its tough pandemic restrictions earlier this month,
allowing the virus to spread rapidly in a country that had seen relatively few
infections since an initial devastating outbreak in the city of Wuhan.
Spiraling infections have led to shortages of cold medicine, long lines at
fever clinics, and at-capacity emergency rooms turning away patients.
Cremations have risen several-fold, with a request from overburdened funeral
homes in one city for families to postpone funeral services until next month.
Chinese state media has not reported the fallout from the
surge widely and government officials have blamed Western media for hyping up
the situation.
The global concerns, tinged with anger, are a direct result
of the ruling Communist Party’s sudden exit from some of the world’s most
stringent anti-virus policies, said Miles Yu, director of the China Center at
the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
“You can’t conduct the lunacy of ‘zero-COVID’ lockdowns for
such a long period of time … and then suddenly unleash a multitude of the
infected from a caged China to the world,” risking major outbreaks elsewhere,
Yu said in an email.
Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease expert at Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the move by the U.S. may be
more about increasing pressure on China to share more information than stopping
a new variant from entering the country.
China has been accused of masking the virus situation in the
country before. An AP
investigation found that the government sat on the release of genetic
information about the virus for more than a week after decoding it, frustrating
WHO officials.
The government also tightly
controlled the dissemination of Chinese research on the virus,
impeding cooperation with international scientists.
Research into the origins of the virus has also been
stymied. A WHO expert group said in a
report this year that “key pieces of data” were missing on the how the
pandemic began and called for a more in-depth investigation.
___
Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Associated Press
journalists Geir Moulson in Berlin, Carla K. Johnson in Seattle and Kanis Leung
in Hong Kong and video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed.
https://apnews.com/article/health-china-disease-outbreaks-covid-19-pandemic-guangzhou-01318eb4fc58a0515d8e8bd1577e385d
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