BEIJING: The Chinese embassy in South Korea has suspended issuing short-term visas for South Korean visitors, it said on Tuesday, the first retaliatory move against nations imposing COVID-19 curbs on travelers from China. Testing requirements introduced by several countries, including the United States, Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, and others in response to China’s COVID outbreak, were called out by foreign ministry as “discriminatory.”
According to state media reports, many parts of the country are already past the peak of COVID-19. The first day of border opening saw about a quarter million travelers enter the country. As per sources, there were 251,045 inbound passenger trips on Sunday. In Hong Kong, 400,000 people are expected to travel into mainland China in the coming weeks with long queues for flights into cities including Beijing and Xiamen. With the restrictions dropped, China has stopped publishing daily infection tallies and has been reporting few deaths a day- figured that the WHO claims ‘underrated’.
China dismissed remarks on Chinese authorities to license a generic version of its COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid for use there. However, it clearly mentioned to be in conversation for a price for the branded product. According to reports on Friday that China was in talks with Pfizer to secure a license that will allow domestic drugmakers to manufacture and distribute a generic version of the U.S. firm’s COVID-19 antiviral drug Paxlovid in China.