As some countries join the club of imposing travel restrictions on arrivals from China, scientists from all over the world believe such a decision was not made based on science, and is logistically cumbersome, and a toxic trend that hurdles the global trend of returning to pre-pandemic normalcy.
China has been actively monitoring, as well as sharing its COVID-19 information with relevant international bodies, said Chinese virologists, noting that certain countries' restrictive measures are out of political motive, and the measures will end in vain and waste precious time and energy. Such "backward' moves will also dampen people-to-people exchange in post pandemic era, they said.
The EU on Wednesday "strongly encouraged" its 27 member nations to require a negative COVID-19 test for travelers boarding flights from China to the region, marking the latest development of certain regions' "political farce" of imposing travel restrictions on arrivals from China.
The US, Japan and South Korea are among the countries that announced restrictions on travelers from China, citing concerns that the current surge of COVID-19 cases in China could lead to emergence of new variants, and that "reduced testing and case reporting in the PRC and minimal sharing of viral genomic sequence data could delay the identification of new variants of concern if they arise," as the US CDC previously said.
