China makes negative COVID-19 test certificate mandatory for all arriving from abroad

Beijing, July 21: All foreigners and Chinese nationals should carry the negative COVID-19 test certificate before entering China, an official announcement here said on Tuesday.

The certificate should be no older than five days at the time of boarding a flight, said the announcement made by China's Civil Aviation Administration, General Administration of Customs, and China's Foreign Ministry said.

At the current stage, the pandemic is under some kind of control in many countries. People to People exchanges and international flights are beginning to increase, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a media briefing. In order to reduce the risks China issued a notice on requiring a negative test certificate for foreign travellers before boarding their planes, he said.

"This will help to ensure safe and orderly restoration of international people to people exchanges and economic activities”, Wang said. All Chinese and foreign passengers should finish the tests five days before they board the flights and airlines are responsible to verify their test results before they let the passengers through, he said.

"Chinese embassies will evaluate testing capabilities of their host countries and on the basis of negotiating and reaching consensus with their host countries they will nail down the exact time line of implementing these measures. We will release the details in due course," he said.

China has permitted international flights from certain countries but not from India yet after halting them at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. China recently conducted COVID-19 tests for millions of people in Wuhan where the virus first surfaced in December last year, followed by a large number of people in Beijing.