Passengers arrive through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport, Boston, Nov. 8 2021.
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cj gunther/Shutterstock
The Biden Administration on Wednesday imposed new Covid testing requirements for travelers from China, and this is better understood as political inoculation than virus protection for Americans.
Biden officials said travelers to the U.S. from China, Hong Kong and Macau will be required as of Jan. 5 to get a PCR or rapid test monitored by a healthcare provider no more than two days before departure. Airlines must confirm the negative test before passengers board.
The U.S. is following Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Italy in imposing testing mandates for Chinese visitors. The apparent concern is that the virus’s untrammeled spread in China after government officials lifted zero-Covid restrictions may increase the risk that more lethal or transmissible variants emerge.
This is possible, but more transmissible variants that evade the antibody response from vaccines and prior infection continue to emerge in the U.S. and other countries too. It’s also possible that China’s lower natural immunity reduces the selective evolutionary pressures that give rise to more immune-evasive and transmissible variants.
U.S. officials are rightly concerned that China may be slow to identify a new dangerous variant and share that information with the world. It took China weeks after the novel coronavirus began spreading in Wuhan to confirm human-to-human transmission. Beijing continues to deny Western scientists access to records needed to determine whether the virus originated from a lab.
While the Biden testing requirement punishes China for its lack of transparency, it’s unlikely to stop a more pathogenic variant from spreading to the U.S. PCR tests usually take a few days to get results. On the other hand, rapid tests are much less sensitive, which is why public-health…
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