Chinese travelers are ready to go overseas again. Some countries are indecisive.

Hong Kong (CNN) — The growing covid epidemic in China. Countries that impose travel restrictions on Chinese travelers are careful to prevent the virus from entering the country. Scientists warn of fear and xenophobia.

But this is not the beginning of 2020. A familiar scene is now playing out as China battles its biggest-ever outbreak, abandoning its strict zero-covid approach and opening its borders to the pandemic three years on.

About half of the 212 passengers who arrived at Italy’s Milan airport from China on Monday were infected with the virus, the regional health chief said on Wednesday.

But as countries including the US and Japan move to lift restrictions, others such as France and Great Britain have made it clear they are ready to welcome Chinese travelers — a key driver of international tourism before the pandemic.

China responded by saying its Covid situation was “under control” and accused Western media of “distorting” recent policy changes.

In an article published Thursday, the state-run tabloid Global Times cited experts as “baseless” and “biased” and said its “real purpose is to undermine China’s three-year-old efforts to control Covid-19 and attack the country’s order.”

Which countries are imposing testing requirements?

Japan announced on Tuesday that all travelers who have traveled to or from mainland China within seven days will be tested on arrival starting Friday, and the government will limit the number of flights to China.

The Prime Minister of the country, Fumio Kishida, pointed out that there is no official information from the Chinese government. “While there is information that the infection is spreading rapidly in mainland China, it is difficult to understand the details, so there is growing concern in Japan,” he said.

Indian authorities have implemented similar guidelines not only for travelers from China, but also for several nearby destinations, including Japan, South Korea and Thailand. The directive is to prevent the rapid spread of Covid-19 as it has in China, officials said on Tuesday.

Taiwan announced mandatory tests on arrival for travelers from mainland China on Wednesday. The self-governing island has banned Chinese tourists since the outbreak and only allows Chinese nationals to visit for business or family reasons.

At all three locations, those who test positive upon arrival are kept in quarantine for several days.

In Europe, both Spain and Italy have strengthened their restrictions. Spain now requires a negative test for Covid-19 or proof of full vaccination for visitors from China, while Italy has brought back mandatory tests. The UK is considering introducing new laws, she said.

People carry luggage in the departure hall of Beijing Airport on December 27.

KYDPL KYODO/AP

Most of these places – especially in the West – have long opened their borders and abandoned testing requirements as part of the transition to living with Covid, and the measures are dramatic.

In Europe, Italy The continent’s first country to be hit by the pandemic in 2020 – has announced it will require Covid tests for all travelers from China, the health minister said: “It is important to identify any differences.” .. in order to protect the Italian people.

On Thursday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECCC) said that an increase in cases in China was not expected to affect the Covid situation in the EU and that restrictions on travelers from China were “not justified”.

So are alternatives a risk?

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for international health at the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged the possibility of a new disparity in the “unvaccinated population.”

Even though[in China]officially 90% of the population is vaccinated with two doses of unvaccinated vaccines, you still have a lot of unvaccinated elderly people… and many of the vaccinated people have done so. Six months ago, so their antibody levels are very low. “So we cannot rule out the possibility that new variants may indeed emerge in China and spread to other parts of the world.”

A federal US health official pointed to the speed of the outbreak in China, saying: “There is a possibility and possibility of a new variant because so many people are infected in a short period of time in China.”

US officials have expressed concern about China’s lack of transparency in recent cases, particularly the lack of genome sequencing data to identify new strains of the coronavirus.

However, GISEAD, an international virus database, said Chinese authorities were entering more genomic information from recent samples — and these appeared to match variants that were already spreading globally.

Karen Grapepin, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, said the best way a country can protect itself from the spread of the virus is by focusing on domestic policies — such as increasing vaccinations, maintaining social distancing, and more. Basic public health measures.

“In most parts of the world, it feels like the epidemic is over… but at the end of the day,[these measures]are what will stop the spread of the virus,” she said.

“If countries are at a point where they think those things aren’t important, for example because they’ve developed a lot of population immunity, then why would they think two new cases from China?”

Are the measures effective?

Despite the potential danger, many health experts have widely criticized the new testing requirements as ineffective at best and alarmist at worst.

“I see no compelling reason to justify this move,” said Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations. “So far, we have no evidence to support the existence of such differences in mainland China.”

“I can understand the concerns about the lack of transparency, about not sharing the genomic sequence,” he added. But even with the ban, we cannot prevent the spread of the virus. And indeed if new variants emerge in China, we will slow down the spread, not prevent the virus from spreading to other parts. the world.”

Grapepin echoes this point, saying, “Frankly, we have no scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of these measures in practice.”

If an infectious variant emerges, it could enter the U.S. anyway, while other countries, Omiron said, pointed out that restrictions were “very small” when it came out last fall.

Pre-launch testing — which the United States requires — is also somewhat ineffective, he said, because many new variants have a short incubation period, which means “there will still be cases where they can succeed.”

Political pressure and xenophobia

Despite questionable use, there are a few reasons why countries are imposing these restrictions, Grapepin said — one of which is the fear that China’s Covid patients will be overwhelmed and flee elsewhere in search of hospitals at home.

But, she added, this is highly unlikely. Outbound travel from China is still extremely low, partly due to limited flight numbers. And with the spread of Covid, it creates a logistical challenge to immediately obtain visas and book overseas flights for infected patients.

Instead, the recent bans may reflect “political pressure (on authorities) to appear to be doing something,” she said. “We see one country do it and then other countries follow suit.”

Medical staff treat patients at a hospital in Jiangsu, China on December 28.

CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images

Experts are warning that identifying with China could raise the risk of further anti-Chinese racism, as seen when Asians around the world face discrimination and violent hate crimes.

Huang said China is not the only place where significant progress is being made on the issue. He added: “I don’t see why China should be treated any differently than countries like Australia, for example, which is swimming in Covid.”

The U.S. is still importing tens of thousands of cases from around the world, Grapepin said, and only 1 to 3% of all international travelers have Covid – so targeting Covid from one country makes little sense.

“We’ve seen this all over the world in pandemics – when certain measures are targeted at people who come from certain places, it reinforces attitudes or beliefs that viruses come from certain parts of the world… It’s simply not true.” She said.

Which countries welcome Chinese travelers?

In contrast, many countries have opened their welcome doors.

The tourism departments and embassies of France, Thailand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Switzerland posted messages on the Chinese Twitter version of Weibo inviting Chinese tourists.

“Friends of China, France welcomes you with honor!” The French Embassy wrote on Weibo. The National Tourism Administration of Thailand wrote: “Thailand has been waiting for you for three years!”

Many Weibo users celebrated their new freedom of travel, with the hashtag “going abroad next year” garnering nearly 80 million views.

In the year In 2018, the World Travel and Tourism Council announced that only China contributed 51 percent of the gross domestic product of travel and tourism in the Asia Pacific region. And Chinese travelers account for 30 percent of all arrivals in Thailand.

CNN’s Cheng Cheng, Pierre Mailhan, Kevin Liptak, Valentina D’Donato, Eric Cheng, Amy Jozuka, Gabby Greitner, Lauren Kent and CNN’s Beijing bureau reported.