South Korea toughens COVID-19 testing for China arrivals

Travelers coming from China are required to take a COVID-19 test before and after their arrival in South Korea beginning next week, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced on Friday. (Yonhap via The Korea Herald/Asia News Network)

SEOUL — South Korea is tightening COVID-19 travel rules for arrivals from China, where a record surge of infections is underway, for about two months starting next year.

The government’s COVID-19 response headquarters on Friday announced that all travelers from China will face extra rules including a mandatory COVID-19 test both before and after arrival.

Only those who are negative in a PCR or a rapid test taken within 48 hours can board the plane to South Korea. Exceptions will be made for Korean nationals traveling for urgent or essential reasons.

For all Korean and non-Korean travelers, PCR testing will be required within 24 hours of their arrival.

Short-term travelers will be tested immediately upon arrival at the airport, and they will be accommodated at the airport until their test results are known. Long-term travelers must quarantine at their residence until test results confirm they are negative. The samples of travelers testing positive will be sequenced for variants.

Travelers from China will also be required to fill out an electronic questionnaire known as “Q-code,” screening their symptoms and recent travel history.

Flights from China will be cut, and can only land at the designated airport, Incheon International Airport.

These rules will be put into place from Jan. 2 to Feb. 28, to be extended depending on the changes in the outbreak situation.

Additionally, from Jan. 2 to 31, diplomatic missions in China will stop issuing short stay visas except for diplomatic, essential business and humanitarian travelers.

Travelers from Hong Kong and Macau are not subject to these rules.

With the latest travel policy South Korea follows Italy’s lead in requiring testing for travelers coming from China. The testing requirement was introduced after 52 percent of passengers on one Dec. 26 flight from China into Malpensa Airport in Milan tested positive for COVID-19, according to Italian news reports.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, South Korea has seen an uptick in imported cases from China from 19, last month, to 278, as of Thursday. The 41 recently sequenced cases revealed all were omicron’s subvariants, the majority or 34 of them BA.5.

“South Korea was first to be affected by the outbreak in China in 2020 so preemptive caution is deemed necessary. PCR tests after especially entry are crucial in monitoring variants,” Jee Young-mee, the KDCA’s commissioner, told a press briefing Friday.

Jee added that as China has stopped sharing its COVID-19 statistics, the risks were “uncertain” calling for more caution.

Earlier this month China abruptly scrapped its zero-COVID policy amid widespread protest from locals. The official data on China’s hospitalizations and deaths remain limited, reports show hospitals in China being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

Leaders have urged China to be more transparent about its COVID-19 information.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “underscored the importance of transparency for the international community” in a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Dec. 22.

In a press briefing last week, the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the United Nations agency was “very concerned with the evolving situation in China with increasing reports of the severe disease.”

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