Several countries are likely to see a surge in Chinese travelers as the country rolls back its quarantine guidelines for incoming travelers. The world’s most populous country, reeling under the impact of the peak of Covid, is entering the Lunar New Year this month, leading millions of people to travel within the country from the megacities to the countryside. Similarly, many countries are putting a further twist on Covid restrictions for Chinese travelers, and airlines have also been reluctant to join China’s goal of ending Covid Zero, a push to isolate the country’s population. from the rest of the world. of Covid-19 since 2020.
Read| China’s chief epidemiologist’s assurance on Covid statistics amid criticism
China bid farewell to its Zero Covid policy under the guise of a low Covid death count. However, satellite images shared on the Internet paint a different picture.
Here are the top 5 updates on the Covid situation in China:
- Several countries, along with the United Nations, tightened travel restrictions for Chinese travelers after the country opened its borders. The Dutch and Portuguese governments are among the countries that recently joined forces to require Chinese travelers to be Covid-negative on arrival.
- Official data for Covid deaths in China has remained at just over 5,000 amid reports of overwhelmed funeral homes across the country. According to Chinese broadcaster NTD, doctors in the country have been asked not to list deaths from covid-19 as the main cause. The report said that people who die due to pre-medical conditions are not counted as covid deaths.
- China closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s Covid policies before reopening the country’s borders. China’s popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts, according to reports.
- Germany has discouraged non-essential travel to China amid reports of rising Covid cases in the country. The country’s foreign ministry said on Twitter: “We currently discourage non-essential travel to China. The reason is a spike in covid infections and an overwhelmed healthcare system.” This comes despite the fact that the country is lagging behind other European Union nations in the post-pandemic recovery in the air travel sector.
- The chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wu Zunyou, said in what is seen as a rebuttal to general criticism of the Covid-19 statistics that data and information collected up to December 2022 are “very precise”. The state-run Global Times newspaper quoted him as saying the country “has always worked to collect, analyze and evaluate statistics.”
