China reported five new COVID deaths on Thursday, bringing its official virus death toll to 5,264.
From Sunday, Jan. 8, China will drop a requirement for inbound travelers to quarantine, the latest dismantling of its “zero-COVID” regime that began last month following historic protests against a suffocating series of mass lockdowns.
But the blunt changes have exposed many of China’s 1.4 billion population to the virus for the first time, initiating an infection wave that is overcoming some hospitals, emptying pharmacy medication shelves, and causing international alarm.
Greece, Germany, and Sweden on Thursday joined more than a dozen countries to demand COVID tests from Chinese travelers, as the World Health Organization said China’s official virus data was under-reporting the true extent of its outbreak.
Chinese officials and state media have struck a defiant tone, defending the handling of the outbreak, playing down the severity of the surge, and denouncing foreign travel requirements for its residents.
“No matter how China decides to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic, some Western media and some Western politicians will never be satisfied,” the state-run Global Times wrote in an editorial late Thursday.
“They should have taken a series of actions before opening up, like advising what precautions people of a certain age should take … and at the very least ensure that the pharmacies were well stocked,” a 70-year-old man who gave his surname as Zhao told Reuters in Shanghai.
“By not doing this, it got very messy.”
The aviation industry, battered by years of pandemic curbs, has also been critical of the decisions to impose testing on travelers from China. China will still require pre-departure testing for inbound travelers after Jan. 8.
Some Chinese citizens think that the reopening has been too hasty.
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