Beijing is pushing back on countries that have adopted a COVID testing requirement for travelers from China, threatening “countermeasures” against nations that are imposing the travel restrictions.
“We believe that the entry restrictions adopted by some countries targeting China lack scientific basis, and some excessive practices are even more unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Tuesday. “We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity.”
The comments come as China is hiding the extent of its COVID outbreak after ending its harsh “zero COVID” strategy last month.
The U.S. is among the countries to impose restrictions on travelers from China, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying the requirement for a negative test or proof of recovery is necessary “given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from the PRC,” which the agency says is critical to “decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern.”
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believes President Xi Jinping should not be allowed to get away with infecting millions around the globe again.
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“Fifty percent of their population traveling. There is no reason we should allow the Chinese to do this again, to send Chinese-infected persons around the world knowingly infecting people all across the globe,” he told radio host John Catsimatidis on Sunday.
His comments came after about half of the passengers on two separate flights from China to Milan, Italy, tested positive for COVID late last month.
“Just as in the spring of 2020 he sent people around the world who he knew were infected, he’s doing the same darn thing again,” Pompeo continued. “He’s going to infect millions more. We shouldn’t let that happen.”
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