WASHINGTON: The United States, which closed its borders to much of the world as the pandemic took hold, said on Wednesday it plans eventually to begin allowing fully vaccinated foreigners back in, while China tightened overseas travel curbs amid surging infection numbers.
The two countries’ travel-related moves come as the fast-spreading Delta variant cuts a deadly swath across the planet, not only affecting movement between countries but also the northern hemisphere’s summer tourist season. Recognising the importance of international travel, a White House official said in a statement that the US administration wants to reopen to visitors from abroad in a “safe and sustainable manner,” though without specifying a timeframe.
Reopening is to include the development of “a phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals travelling to the United States — from all countries — need to be fully vaccinated,” the official said. Meanwhile in China, which had previously boasted of its success in crushing Covid-19 after it first emerged there in December 2019, mass testing campaigns have uncovered Delta variant infections across the country.
Local governments have tested entire cities and locked down millions, with the official figures on Wednesday revealing 71 new infections — the most since January.
China’s immigration authority announced it would stop issuing ordinary passports and other documents needed for exiting the country in “non-essential and non-emergency” cases.
However, the authorities have pulled back from issuing a blanket ban on overseas travel.
The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that halting booster shots until at least the end of September would help ease the drastic inequity in dose distribution between rich and poor nations. And that, they said, would help fight a pandemic that has killed more than 4.25 million people worldwide.
“We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it, while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Washington swiftly shot down the proposal. — AFP
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