As of January 5, all travelers from China, Hong Kong and Macao, which are facing a major wave of COVID-19 contaminations, will have to present a negative result for COVID-19.
The Government of Canada justifies the application of this measure by “the sudden increase in cases of COVID-19 in the People’s Republic of China, and because of the limited amount of epidemiological and genomic sequencing data related to the virus concerning these cases” , he said in a press release.
Earlier this week, several countries including the United States, Japan, Taiwan and Italy announced that they would impose new entry restrictions on travelers from China.
In recent weeks, the number of infections has exploded across China. The “zero COVID-19” policy practiced by the country since the beginning of 2020 was quickly dismantled. Admitting that it was “impossible” to follow the evolution of the epidemic, the country has since Sunday stopped publishing daily data on the health situation.
The lack of sequencing of COVID-19 cases in China to identify new variants worries several experts. In interview with The Press Wednesday, the DD Caroline Quach, pediatrician and microbiologist-infectiologist at the CHU Sainte-Justine and professor at the University of Montreal, admitted however not to be convinced that the border measures will change the portrait of the situation. “Probably the variants that we’re trying to curb are already on our doorstep,” she says.