The global lobbying group for international air travel is siding with Beijing over harsh new COVID restrictions on flights originating in China.
The International Air Transport Association said the “knee-jerk reinstatement” of measures such as pre-boarding COVID tests and tests on landing have been proven ineffective in the past, despite a worrying lack of transparency from Beijing. “Governments must base their decisions on science facts rather than science politics,” IATA Director General Willie Walsh said on Wednesday, adding that restrictions only delay a peak in new waves while “strangling off international connectivity, damaging economies and destroying jobs.”
The comments mirror similar statements in March 2020, when the airline industry lobbied against closing off countries with soaring case numbers of COVID-19.
The criticism comes after Beijing threatened unspecified “counter-measures” to the growing list of countries implementing travel restrictions on flights from China. It’s unclear what those measures may be, given that China itself already requires a negative COVID test for all incoming travelers and will only scrap its mandatory five-day quarantine in government facilities for all arriving passengers on Jan. 8.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the measures are “politically motivated” to hurt the Chinese economy. “We believe that the entry restrictions adopted by some countries targeting China lack scientific basis, and some excessive practices are even more unacceptable,” Mao said. “We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity.”
Beijing’s remarks came after Australia and Canada joined the U.S., U.K., India and Japan in requiring all passengers from flights out of China to present a negative COVID test within 48 hours of boarding. Several other countries, including Italy, require all passengers to be tested on arrival. Two flights that landed in Milan before Christmas from China showed infection rates of more than 50 percent of the passengers.
One Chinese passenger who tested positive upon arrival in South Korea Tuesday evening escaped a government quarantine hotel and is being hunted by police. The 41-year-old Chinese national was spotted at a discount store in a busy district on Yeongjong island, according to the South China Morning Post.
The European Union, which initially scoffed at restrictions, has come together, with an announcement Tuesday that the majority of countries in the bloc want pre-flight testing. The bloc also offered vaccines to China to help with the outbreak, but Beijing refused, saying it “had enough supplies.”
The international community has united in its mistrust of data coming out of China about the extent of the infection rate after the country dropped its zero-COVID measures last month. China reports very few deaths and around 5,000 new infections a day despite reports that crematoriums and hospitals are overrun.
Fears that a new variant might be lurking in Chinese positive cases has prompted a number of countries to carry out genetic sequencing of positive test samples. Italy has found no new variants in its sequencing. Belgium has started testing wastewater on flights from China to fill in the data gap left by China’s underreporting, the country’s Health Ministry said in a statement.
Millions of travelers are expected to be on the move to celebrate the Chinese New Year on Jan. 22.
