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List of countries that mandate COVID-19 tests for China travelers

Canada require people flying from China, Hong Kong and Macao to test negative for COVID-19 before leaving for Canada, starting on Thursday, Jan. 5. (AP)
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Updated 06 January 2023
Reuters
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List of countries that mandate COVID-19 tests for China travelers

  • WHO’s latest report showed 22,416 new hospitalizations for mainland China in the week to Jan.1 versus 15,161 the previous week
Updated 06 January 2023
Reuters

BEIJING/SHANGHAI: China defended on Thursday its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after US President Joe Biden voiced concern and the World Health Organization (WHO) said Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths.
The WHO’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday in some of the UN health agency’s most critical remarks to date, that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several fronts.
China scrapped its stringent COVID-19 controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had shielded its 1.4 billion population from the virus for three years.
Authorities around the world are imposing or considering curbs on travelers from China as COVID-19 cases there surged following its relaxation of “zero-COVID” rules. China has rejected criticism of its COVID-19 data.
PLACES IMPOSING CURBS
United states
The United States will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travelers from China beginning on Jan. 5. All air passengers aged two and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said US citizens should reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong and Macau.
EU
European Union government officials recommended on Wednesday that passengers flying from China to the EU should have a negative COVID-19 test before they board. They also suggested all passenger on flights to and from China should wear face masks, that EU governments introduce random testing of passengers arriving from China and that they test and sequence wastewater in airports with international flights and planes arriving from China.
Sweden
Sweden will require travelers from China to show they have tested negative for COVID before they can enter the country, the government said.
UK
The UK will require a pre-departure negative COVID-19 test for passengers from China as of Jan. 5, the Department of Health said on Friday. However, a report in The Independent on Monday said passengers from China who arrive in the United Kingdom next week will not face compulsory COVID-19 tests on arrival.
France
France will require travelers from China to provide a negative COVID test result less than 48 hours before departure. Starting Jan. 1, France will carry out random PCR COVID tests upon arrival on travelers coming from China, a government official told reporters.
France has urged all 26 other European Union member states to test Chinese travelers for COVID.
Australia
Travelers from China to Australia will need to submit a negative COVID-19 test from Jan. 5, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said on Sunday.
India
The country has mandated a COVID-19 negative test report for travelers arriving from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand. Passengers from those countries will be quarantined if they show symptoms or test positive.
Canada
Air travelers to Canada from China must test negative for COVID-19 no more than two days before departure, Ottawa said.
Japan
The country will require negative coronavirus test results within 72 hours of passengers boarding direct flights from China, the prime minister said on Jan 4. That is in addition to an existing regulation that passengers who had been in China in the seven days prior to their flight will be subject to a COVID-19 test on arrival in Japan. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days.
Italy
Italy has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travelers from China. Milan’s main airport, Malpensa, has already started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai.
Spain
Spain will require a negative COVID-19 test or a full course of vaccination against the disease upon arrival for travelers from China.
Malaysia
Malaysia will screen all inbound travelers for fever and test wastewater from aircraft arriving from China for COVID-19.
Taiwan
Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center said all passengers on direct flights from China, as well as by boat at two offshore islands, will have to take PCR tests upon arrival, starting on Jan. 1.
South Korea
South Korea will require travelers from China, Macau and Hong Kong to provide negative COVID-19 test results before departure, health authorities said.
Morocco
Morocco will impose a ban on people arriving from China, whatever their nationality, from Jan. 3.
Qatar
Qatar will require travelers arriving from China from Jan. 3 to provide a negative COVID-19 test result taken within 48 hours of departure, state news agency QNA said.
Belguim
Belgium will test wastewater from planes arriving from China for new COVID-19 variants as part of new steps against the spread of the coronavirus, the government announced on Monday.
Israel
Newly appointed Health Minister Aryeh Deri announced new COVID-19 testing requirements for travelers from China, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a surge of infections, according to the Times of Israel.

Places monitoring situation
Philippines
The Philippines sees a need to intensify monitoring and implementation of border controls for incoming individuals especially from China, Manila’s health ministry said.

Topics: COVID-19 China

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Russia’s biggest airstrike in weeks piles pressure on Ukraine power grid

Updated 6 sec ago
Reuters
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Russia’s biggest airstrike in weeks piles pressure on Ukraine power grid

  • Russia’s defense ministry said it struck Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and energy facilities in retaliation for Kyiv’s strikes on Russian energy facilities
Updated 6 sec ago
Reuters

KYIV: Russian missiles and drones struck nearly a dozen Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities on Wednesday, causing serious damage at three Soviet-era thermal power plants and blackouts in multiple regions, officials said.
Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 39 of 55 missiles and 20 of 21 attack drones used for the attack, which piles more pressure on the energy system more than two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
“Another massive attack on our energy industry!” Energy Minister German Galushchenko wrote on the Telegram app.
Two people were injured in the Kyiv region and one was hurt in the Kirovohrad region, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
Galushchenko said power generation and transmission facilities in the Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia regions were targeted.
Some 350 rescuers raced to minimize the damage to energy facilities, 30 homes, public transport vehicles, cars, and a fire station, the interior ministry said.
National power grid operator Ukrenergo said it was forced to introduce electricity cuts in nine regions for consumers and that it would expand them nationwide for businesses during peak evening hours until 11 p.m. (2000 GMT).
Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, interviewed by the Ukrainska Pravda media outlet, said electricity imports would not make up for power shortages. He said hydropower stations had also been hit, clarifying an earlier company statement omitting hydro stations from the list of affected facilities.
Power cuts for industrial users, he said, were “almost guaranteed” but interruptions for domestic users would depend on how well they reduced consumption.
“Many important power stations were damaged,” he said, citing three stations operated by DTEK, Ukraine’s biggest private company, as well as two hydropower stations.
“The damage is on quite a large scale. There is a significant loss of generating power, so significant that even imports of power from Europe will not cover the shortage that has been created in the energy system.”
Russia’s defense ministry said it struck Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and energy facilities in retaliation for Kyiv’s strikes on Russian energy facilities.
“As a result of the strike, Ukraine’s capabilities for the output of military products, as well as the transfer of Western weapons and military equipment to the line of contact, have been significantly reduced,” the ministry said.

WORLD WAR TWO ANNIVERSARY
President Volodymyr Zelensky noted the attacks were launched on the day Ukraine marks the end of World War Two.
“This is how the Kremlin marks the end of World War Two in Europe, with a massive strike, attempting to disrupt the lives of our people with its Nazism,” he said in his nightly video address.
In an earlier online address, Zelensky singled out what he said was the West’s limited progress in curbing Russian energy revenue and some countries that attended President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a fifth term in the Kremlin on Tuesday.
Fighting Nazism back then, he said, was “when humanity unites, opposes Hitler, instead of buying his oil and coming to his inauguration.”
Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian refineries this year despite apparent objections by the United States, trying to find a pressure point against the Kremlin whose forces are slowly advancing in the eastern Donbas region.
Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries may have disrupted more than 15 percent of Russian oil refining capacity, a NATO military alliance official has said.
After pounding the energy system in the first winter of the war, Russia renewed its assault on the grid in March as Ukraine was running low on stocks of Western air defense missiles.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal estimated that more than 800 heating facilities had been damaged and up to 8 GW of power generation lost so far, adding the government needed $1 billion to fund repair work.
DTEK vowed to keep working to restore power at its facilities, and its CEO, Maxim Timchenko, called on Ukraine’s allies to provide more air defense systems.
Officials did not name the facilities hit on Wednesday, part of a policy of wartime secrecy that Kyiv says is needed to prevent Russia using the information for further strikes.
But Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said Russia attacked a natural gas storage facility in his region in the west of the country, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
In central Poltava region, energy infrastructure was hit by a drone, Poltava Regional Governor Filip Pronin said.
The governors of Vinnytsia and Zaporizhzhia said critical civilian infrastructure facilities were damaged.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict russian strikes Kyiv

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Armenia’s prime minister in Russia for talks amid strain in ties

Updated 09 May 2024
AP
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Armenia’s prime minister in Russia for talks amid strain in ties

  • Putin hosted Nikol Pashinyan for talks following a summit of the Eurasian Economic Union, a Moscow-dominated economic alliance
  • Armenia’s ties with its longtime sponsor and ally Russia have grown increasingly strained after Azerbaijan waged a lightning military campaign in September to reclaim the Karabakh region
Updated 09 May 2024
AP

MOSCOW: Armenia’s prime minister visited Moscow and held talks Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid spiraling tensions between the estranged allies.

Putin hosted Nikol Pashinyan for talks following a summit of the Eurasian Economic Union, a Moscow-dominated economic alliance. that they both attended earlier in the day. The negotiations came a day after Putin began his fifth term at a glittering Kremlin inauguration.
In brief remarks at the start of the talks, Putin said that bilateral trade was growing, but acknowledged “some issues concerning security in the region.”
Pashinyan, who last visited Moscow in December, said that “certain issues have piled up since then.”
Armenia’s ties with its longtime sponsor and ally Russia have grown increasingly strained after Azerbaijan waged a lightning military campaign in September to reclaim the Karabakh region, ending three decades of ethnic Armenian separatists’ rule there.
Armenian authorities accused Russian peacekeepers who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh after the previous round of hostilities in 2020 of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s onslaught. Moscow, which has a military base in Armenia, has rejected the accusations, arguing that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene.
The Kremlin, in turn, has been angered by Pashinyan’s efforts to deepen ties with the West and distance his country from Moscow-dominated security and economic alliances.
Just as Pashinyan was visiting Moscow on Wednesday, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country will stop paying fees to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-dominated security pact. Armenia has previously suspended its participation in the grouping as Pashinyan has sought to bolster ties with the European Union and NATO.
Russia was also vexed by Armenia’s decision to join the International Criminal Court, which last year indicted Putin for alleged war crimes connected to the Russian action in Ukraine.
Moscow, busy with the Ukrainian conflict that has dragged into a third year, has publicly voiced concern about Yerevan’s westward shift but sought to downplay the differences.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov conceded Tuesday that “there are certain problems in our bilateral relations,” but added that “there is a political will to continue the dialogue.”

Topics: Armenia Russia Nikol Pashinyan Vladimir Putin

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AstraZeneca to withdraw COVID vaccine globally as demand dips

Updated 08 May 2024
Reuters
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AstraZeneca to withdraw COVID vaccine globally as demand dips

  • AstraZeneca says initiated worldwide withdrawal due to “surplus of available updated vaccines”
  • Drugmaker has previously admitted vaccine causes side effects such as blood clots, low blood platelet counts
Updated 08 May 2024
Reuters

AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had initiated the worldwide withdrawal of its COVID-19 vaccine due to a “surplus of available updated vaccines” since the pandemic.

The company also said it would proceed to withdraw the vaccine Vaxzevria’s marketing authorizations within Europe.

“As multiple, variant COVID-19 vaccines have since been developed there is a surplus of available updated vaccines,” the company said, adding that this had led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied.

According to media reports, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has previously admitted in court documents that the vaccine causes side-effects such as blood clots and low blood platelet counts.

The firm’s application to withdraw the vaccine was made on March 5 and came into effect on May 7, according to the Telegraph, which first reported the development.

The Serum Institute of India (SII), which produced AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine under the brand name Covishield, stopped manufacturing and supply of the doses since December 2021, an SII spokesperson said.

London-listed AstraZeneca began moving into respiratory syncytial virus vaccines and obesity drugs through several deals last year after a slowdown in growth as COVID-19 medicine sales declined.

Topics: AstraZeneca covid

Ex-national security adviser criticizes UK PM for not suspending arms sales to Israel

Updated 08 May 2024
Arab News
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Ex-national security adviser criticizes UK PM for not suspending arms sales to Israel

  • Lord Peter Ricketts: ‘Pity’ govt ‘could not have taken a stand on this and got out ahead of the US’
  • American decision to pause delivery of weapons seen as warning to Israel to abandon or temper plan to invade Rafah
Updated 08 May 2024
Arab News

LONDON: A former UK national security adviser has condemned Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for failing to suspend weapons sales to Israel, The Independent reported on Wednesday.

After the US paused a delivery of bombs, Sunak has yet to follow suit despite mounting pressure from within his own Conservative Party.

Lord Peter Ricketts, a life peer in the House of Lords and retired senior diplomat, said Britain should have been “ahead of the US” in ending arms sales to Israel.

The US decision to pause the shipment of bombs is seen as a warning to Israel to abandon or temper its plan to invade Rafah in southern Gaza.

More than 1 million Palestinian civilians are sheltering in the city after being forced out of northern sections of the enclave.

Ricketts said it is a “pity” that “the government could not have taken a stand on this and got out ahead of the US.”

Conservative MP David Jones made the same call in comments to The Independent, saying: “We should give similar consideration to a pause.”

He added: “Anyone viewing the distressing scenes in Gaza will want to see an end to the fighting. Hamas is in reality beaten. Now is the time for diplomacy to bring this dreadful conflict to an end.”

At Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, Sunak faced a flurry of questions over Britain’s potential ties to an Israeli invasion of Rafah. He said the government’s position remains “unchanged.”

Topics: War on Gaza Peter Ricketts rishi sunak Britain David Jones

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Taliban deny Pakistani claims of Afghan involvement in attack on Chinese workers

Updated 08 May 2024
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Taliban deny Pakistani claims of Afghan involvement in attack on Chinese workers

  • According to Islamabad, suicide attack that killed 5 Chinese in Pakistan was planned in Afghanistan
  • Afghan Defense Ministry says the March attack showed weakness of Pakistan’s security agencies
Updated 08 May 2024
MODASER ISLAMI

KABUL: The Taliban on Wednesday rejected allegations of Afghan involvement in a recent deadly attack on Chinese workers in neighboring Pakistan.

The five Chinese nationals, who were employed on the site of a hydropower project in Dasu in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, were killed alongside their driver in a suicide blast on March 26.

Pakistan’s military said on Tuesday that the attack was planned in Afghanistan and that the suicide bomber was an Afghan citizen.

Maj. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s army, also told reporters that Islamabad had “solid evidence” of militants using Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan, that since the beginning of the year such assaults had killed more than 60 security personnel and that authorities in Kabul were unhelpful in addressing the violence.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Defense responded on Wednesday that the claims were “irresponsible and far from the reality.

“Blaming Afghanistan for such incidents is a failed attempt to divert attention from the truth, and we strongly reject it,” Enayatullah Khwarazmi, the ministry’s spokesperson, said in a statement.

“The killing of Chinese citizens in an area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is under tight security cover of the Pakistani army, shows the weakness of the Pakistani security agencies or cooperation with the attackers.”

The Dasu attack followed two other major assaults in regions where China has invested more than $65 billion in infrastructure projects as part of its wider Belt and Road Initiative.

On March 25, a naval air base was attacked in Turbat in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, and on March 20, militants stormed a government compound in nearby Gwadar district, which is home to a Chinese-operated port.

Pakistan is home to twin insurgencies, one by militants related to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — the Pakistani Taliban — and the other by ethnic separatists who seek secession in southwestern Balochistan province, which remains Pakistan’s poorest despite being rich in natural resources.

While the attacks in Balochistan were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army — the most prominent of several separatist groups in the province, no group claimed responsibility for the one in Dasu.

Blaming it on Afghanistan, however, was “baseless,” according to Naseer Ahmad Nawidy, an international relations professor at Salam University in Kabul.

“The insurgency in the region has existed for very long now and cannot be attributed to a specific area or country. Pakistan looks at the Islamic Emirate in its current form as a threat to its interests. The Pakistan government needs to develop its relations with the Islamic Emirate based on equal rights and goodwill for stability in the whole region,” Nawidy told Arab News.

“Stability in the region requires mutual cooperation and trust. The governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan must end the relations crisis at the earliest. Repeating such claims will further increase the tensions and may cause enmity between the two countries.”

Abdul Saboor Mubariz, a political scientist and lecturer at Alfalah University in Jalalabad, said that Pakistan’s claims were meant to put pressure on the Taliban to help Islamabad in its campaign against the TTP.

“Pakistan’s government is using different forms of pressure such as forcible deportation of Afghan refugees, claims about security threats from Afghanistan, closing border points and creating challenges for Afghan traders,” he said, adding that accusations and claims of links to attacks were affecting the Taliban administration as it still sought recognition from foreign governments.

“The claims are critical for the Islamic Emirate as it is seeking engagement with the countries in the region and across the globe, while the government remains unrecognized by all world countries.”

Topics: Afghanistan Pakistan Taliban China

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