Nations tighten Covid restrictions as China reopens its borders. Top 5 updates

Several countries are likely to see a surge in Chinese travellers as the country rolls back its quarantine guidelines for inbound travellers.

The world’s populous country, which is reeling under the impact of Covid spike, is entering the Lunar New Year this month leading millions to travel within the country from megacities to countryside.

Likewise, many countries are giving an extra turn to Covid restrictions for Chinese travellers as well as airlines have also remained reluctant to get onboard with China’s target to end Covid Zero, a drive to isolate the country’s population from the rest of the world in the wake of Covid-19 since 2020.

China bid adieu to its Zero Covid policy in the pretext of low Covid-death counts. However, satellite images shared in the internet paint a different picture.

Here are top 5 updates on China’s Covid situation:

Several countries along with the United Nations tightened travel restrictions on Chinese travellers after the country opened its borders. Dutch and Portuguese governments are among the recently joined countries to mandate Covid-negative for Chinese travellers upon arrival.

The official data of Covid deaths in China has been kept a little over 5,000 amid reports of overflowing funeral homes across the country. According to Chinese broadcaster NTD, doctors in the country have been asked to not list deaths under Covid-19 as the primary cause. The report said that people dying due to pre-medical conditions are not counted as Covid deaths.

China shut down social media accounts of over 1,000 critics of the government’s Covid policies ahead of reopening the country’s borders. China’s popular Sina Weibo social media platform said that 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 surge in Covid cases in the country.

Country’s foreign ministry said on Twitter, “We currently discourage non-essential trips to China. The reason is a peak in Covid infections and an overwhelmed health system.” This comes despite the country is lagging behind other European Union nations in post-pandemic recovery in the air travel sector.

Chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Wu Zunyou, said in what is seen as a rebuttal to general criticism regarding statistics on Covid-19 that the data and information collected until December, 2022, is “very accurate”. He was quoted as saying by the state-run Global Times that the country “has always worked to collect, analyse and assess statistics”.