Commonground
Senior Moderator
Reuters
Mon, August 25, 2025
BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese customs screened 600 million people at international ports for infectious diseases over the past five years, officials said on Monday, while pledging to refine containment protocols that became a hallmark of Beijing's zero-COVID policy.
Customs officials detected more than 180,000 cases of infectious disease at China's borders during that time, Zhao Zenglian, deputy director general of the customs agency, told a news conference on border management.
-snip-
"Over 600 million inbound travellers and 300 million inbound vehicles and vessels were screened, and 5.25 million disease vectors were intercepted, effectively preventing the entry of over 30 types of vector-borne diseases," Zhao said.
He did not specify which diseases officials were screening for but since the pandemic China has warned of the risks posed by imported cases of mosquito-borne virus chikungunya and Mpox, a viral infection marked by flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions.
"Quarantine defences at ports of entry have become more robust... Health and disease control departments have coordinated to build a 'closed-loop' management system: from overseas, to the border, and then to the home," Zhao said.
(Reporting by Joe Cash and Xiuhao Chen; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
Continued: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/china-screened-600-million-disease-090910262.html
Mon, August 25, 2025
BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese customs screened 600 million people at international ports for infectious diseases over the past five years, officials said on Monday, while pledging to refine containment protocols that became a hallmark of Beijing's zero-COVID policy.
Customs officials detected more than 180,000 cases of infectious disease at China's borders during that time, Zhao Zenglian, deputy director general of the customs agency, told a news conference on border management.
-snip-
"Over 600 million inbound travellers and 300 million inbound vehicles and vessels were screened, and 5.25 million disease vectors were intercepted, effectively preventing the entry of over 30 types of vector-borne diseases," Zhao said.
He did not specify which diseases officials were screening for but since the pandemic China has warned of the risks posed by imported cases of mosquito-borne virus chikungunya and Mpox, a viral infection marked by flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions.
"Quarantine defences at ports of entry have become more robust... Health and disease control departments have coordinated to build a 'closed-loop' management system: from overseas, to the border, and then to the home," Zhao said.
(Reporting by Joe Cash and Xiuhao Chen; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
Continued: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/china-screened-600-million-disease-090910262.html