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As China reverses its strict zero-covid lockdown policy, infections continue to rise across the country. Hospitals are overwhelmed, bodies are pouring in and bodies are struggling to cope.
In response, dozens of countries – from the US and Europe to Asia and Africa – have issued various restrictions targeting travelers from China. Many, like the US, several European countries, India, Japan, South Korea and Ghana require travelers from China to show negative Covid-19 tests before boarding a flight. Some are insisting that these passengers undergo new tests on landing and, if those are positive, be quarantined.
Japan has also restricted flights from China. South Korea, meanwhile, stopped issuing tourist visas to Chinese visitors in early January. And Morocco has temporarily banned all visitors from China, regardless of nationality.
In retaliation, China stopped issuing short-term visas to South Korean and Japanese visitors, beginning in 2018. Visions of a return to a chaotic travel landscape in 2020 and 2021, with individual nations taking on each other with little international coordination. On January 29, China said it would resume visas for Japanese citizens.
The US, EU countries and many other countries have confirmed their actions aimed at protecting their citizens. Yet in an interview with Britain’s LBC radio, UK Transport Secretary Mark Harper recently acknowledged another potential reason for the policies: encouraging Beijing to be more transparent about the effects of the lack of transparency related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
So what does science say? Will the ban on Chinese travelers make the world safer?
Short answer: Scientists told Al Jazeera that the restrictions could have a significant impact on the number of COVID-19 cases in other countries or the spread of new strains. But the policies may be working to pressure China to be more transparent.
Will China’s deadly epidemic spread?
After easing strict restrictions in December following massive protests, China has struggled against the rapid spread of the virus. Between December 8 and January 12, the country’s hospitals reported nearly 60,000 deaths related to Covid.
A recent forecast by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that the repeal of zero-covid laws would contribute to nearly 300,000 deaths in April and nearly a million more by the end of the year.
Other governments have said they are concerned about travelers from China bringing the virus. Italy, for example, introduced its new rules after two flights from China landed with nearly half of the passengers on board tested positive for Covid-19. And the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said the number of infected visitors from China to South Korea rose from just 19 in November to 349 in December.
However, several meta-analyses – comparisons of many different types of studies – show that these measures are most effective early on when they can reduce the spread of the virus.
Once the infection is widespread around the world, travel restrictions will only work with domestic policies such as strict mask orders, social distancing and lockdowns. Summer Marion, a professor and researcher in international studies and health policy at Bentley University in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera today that few people have the patience or interest for such domestic rules.
Most of the countries that have targeted visitors from China have relaxed mask mandates and other restrictions on their citizens, even as they struggle with significant case loads. For example, the United States is recording an average of more than 40,000 new cases per day.
The optics of responding to the crisis in China, from the perspective of its citizens, could influence the actions governments take, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. .
It’s probably science, according to experts.
“Even if every traveler from China is positive, it’s a small fraction of the total COVID-19 case load in the U.S. today,” said Karen Ann Grapepin, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong. Public health.
South Korea, for example, reported 31,106 new cases between January 14 and 21 – more than 100 times China’s monthly tally of 349 Covid-positive travelers.
But the US CDC cited another concern in its explanation of travel restrictions: the creation of “novel variants.”
Can restrictions stop a new variant?
So far, there is no confirmation that the increase in cases in China is due to any new variant of the virus.
On January 4, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that data from China indicated that more than 97 percent of the new cases were from the known Omicron coronavirus strains.
The European Union’s European Center for Disease Prevention and Control recently concluded that “the differences that are spreading in China are spreading across EU nations” and that “the immune response of their citizens is not difficult.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean new variants can’t change from the current ones because infections are high in China. The US CDC cited that risk when it announced travel restrictions.
“If we believe what the public health authorities are telling us,” the travel restrictions “are intended to stop the importation of new variants that may emerge in China – but they have not yet been established,” Grapepin told Al Jazeera.
As she says, that notion is hollow. China is not the only country to have seen a spike in infections in Japan and South Korea over the past year – but it is the only one hit by travel measures. There is little evidence to suggest that China is likely to have new variants.
Grappi pointed out that what is currently spreading like wildfire across the US and possibly spreading from the US to other countries is Omicron’s subsidiary US XBB.1.5, which was first discovered in New York City.
In the year At the end of 2021, when Omicron itself was new, Grapepin argued for the Washington Post that the travel restrictions imposed by the West on South Africa – where it was first discovered – and other African countries are ineffective. As of late December 2021, Omicron has become the dominant variant in the US despite strict border controls.
Peter Chin-Hong, a professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said today’s new differences are also less cause for concern than they were in the beginning.
“You can give me a doctor’s end date difference, but it won’t have the same effect as when the epidemic started,” Chin-hong said. This is because “the population is in a very different place, with more vaccinations, enrichment and natural waves of infection,” he told Al Jazeera.
Drugs that are widely available today, such as paxlovide and remdesivir, can also help. They are largely effective at sidestepping the devastating effects of new virus variants because they target enzymes critical to virus replication, regardless of the variant.
Experience with past public health crises such as Ebola has also shown that, in addition to dealing with new and localized outbreaks, travel restrictions work best against diseases with severe and rapid onset of symptoms, Chin-Hong said.
Covid-19, with its low infection rate, long latency — symptoms can appear days after someone is infected — and widespread global transmission doesn’t meet those conditions. A passenger with a negative test may still be infected with the virus.
But there is another reason why countries are imposing tougher rules on travelers from China, experts said.
Will China open up on data?
Beijing has described the restrictions as “discriminatory”. But other governments and experts have argued that only China itself is to blame.
China has reportedly been offered vaccine doses and other aid by the US. But he insisted that the vaccination and medical supplies are adequate and “the COVID situation is under control”.
Osterholm of the University of Minnesota told Al Jazeera that Beijing’s position is dishonest.
In many ways, China has kept the world in the dark with its Covid-19 information. He is often accused of passing up covid deaths because the underlying causes of death were exacerbated by the virus. Many experts fear that even the latest estimates of the death toll rising in December and January may be far below the reality.
“Nowadays I’m getting more information from China, far away, from news reporters on the ground or from private sector companies. [than from the government]”Osterholm said. Either way, the picture is one of an under-vaccinated population, reversing zero-covid policies with inadequate stockpiles of antiviral drugs.
Although the current testing and travel restrictions in China are less likely to harm outbreaks in other countries, there is still something that governments around the world can gain from these measures. “The only thing left is to encourage the Chinese authorities to share more information and do more sequencing of the virus,” Chin-Hong said.
The US CDC hinted at as much in the initial announcement of the new travel restrictions, citing a “lack of adequate and clear epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data” in China. The World Health Organization cited a lack of data transparency to call China’s travel restrictions “understandable.”
The pressure may be paying off.
Since late December, China has dramatically added genomic data to the Global Initiative for Avian Influenza Information Sharing (GISAID) sequence database, allowing scientists from elsewhere to better analyze the nature of the infection in China. He converted only 52 series between December 1 and 24 but delivered 540 over the next six days. And the pattern continued into January, according to GISAID: China submitted 2,641 orders in the past four weeks.
Many experts, such as Bentley University in Marion, caution against lumping measures into an initiative aimed at travelers from China. Still, transparency seems to be a key motivator – these initiatives are examples of policies that push for data collection rather than data-driven policy.
However, two things are clear. First, Osterholm said, “If you can’t control it in the country where people are leaving, you can’t control it at your border.” And second, a more transparent China will have better outcomes for the world’s response to Covid-19.
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