As COVID-hit China reopens to the world, countries put up travel barriersv

With China days away from dropping border controls that have effectively shut it off from the rest of the world for three years, countries are lining up to impose curbs on travellers from China to contain its raging COVID-19 outbreak, Qazet.az reports.

From Sunday, Jan. 8, China will drop a requirement for inbound travellers 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 abrupt changes have exposed many of China's 1.4 billion population to the virus for the first time, triggering an infection wave that is overwhelming some hospitals, emptying pharmacy shelves of medication and causing international alarm.

Greece, Germany and Sweden on Thursday joined more than a dozen countries to demand COVID tests from Chinese travellers, as the World Health Organisation said China's official virus data was under-reporting the true extent of its outbreak.