(CNN) — The US plans to relax restrictions on COVID-19 tests for travelers from China as soon as this Friday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN on Tuesday, citing a decline in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. by covid-19 and more data on the variants that circulated in China.
In December, federal health authorities announced that, starting January 5, the US would require all travelers from China to submit a negative COVID-19 test result before flying into the country, after the rapid relaxation of sanitary restrictions by Beijing will cause an increase in cases.
According to the source, the order was put in place in an effort to protect US citizens following “a huge surge of infections in the People’s Republic of China,” coupled with “a lack of transparency” on the part of Chinese authorities around the increase.
The Washington Post was the first to report the relaxation of travel restrictions.
The Joe Biden administration continues to plan to monitor cases in China and around the world, maintaining a Traveler Genomic Surveillance (TGS) program that polls travelers for details of new variants.
The testing requirement, put in place in January, came after China rolled back its controversial and long-standing zero-COVID policy in early December, catching many in the country by surprise.
US authorities expressed concern at the time about the risk of a new variant emerging in China, while having little understanding of the rise in infections.
Tuesday’s announcement also comes after the US Department of Energy’s assessment that the virus likely arose from a laboratory accident in China further strained US-China relations.
The department’s “low confidence” determination – a minority opinion among US intelligence agencies – prompted the Chinese Foreign Ministry to call on the US to “respect science and facts, stop politicizing this issue, put end their intelligence-led, politically driven origin tracing.”
China has fiercely denied that the virus arose from a laboratory accident, but has complicated outside efforts to understand how the pandemic originated.
