The move comes amid concerns of a lack of transparent data from China over COVID cases and Beijing prepares to scrap quarantine for travellers.
| Countries across the globe are implementing or considering measures to test or restrict travellers from China as the country of 1.4 billion abandons its COVD-zero policy and prepares to reopen borders in early January.
US officials said the government had raised questions about the transparency of data China was reporting about the spread of the virus. This week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said there were “great discrepancies” in information coming out of the country, fuelling growing concern.China is experiencing the world’s largest COVID-19 outbreak, raising concerns among public-health officials worldwide.
China will start issuing new passports and Hong Kong travel permits to mainland residents, the National Immigration Administration said in an announcement on WeChat late on Monday. Express checkpoints on the borders with Hong Kong and Macau will resume, while applications by foreigners to extend or renew visas will also re-commence as part of the relaxation of measures on January 8.
All the sequences shared by the Chinese health authorities suggested the viruses fuelling the massive nationwide outbreak closely resembled the circulating variants found in the rest of the world since July. Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by the stringent COVID-19 curbs which have battered the $US17 trillion economy, have flocked to travel sites ahead of next month’s end of border quarantine.
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