Chinese travelers are ready to go overseas again. Some countries are hesitant

A surging Covid outbreak in China. Countries imposing travel restrictions on Chinese travelers, wary of the virus being imported. Scientists warning against fearmongering and xenophobia.

But this isn't early 2020. The familiar scene is playing out now as China battles its biggest-ever outbreak, after abandoning its stringent zero-Covid approach and partially reopening its border three years into the pandemic.

The country announced this week it will drop quarantine requirements for international arrivals and resume outbound travel for Chinese citizens, which had previously been banned. It prompted a surge of eager travelers booking flights out of the country, hungry for a trip after several years of isolation -- but it also sparked concern among some overseas governments as China's Covid cases skyrocket.

Almost half of the 212 passengers who arrived in Italy's Milan airport from China on Monday tested positive for Covid, said a regional health chief on Wednesday.

But while countries including the US and Japan move to impose restrictions, others such France and Great Britain have made it clear they are ready to welcome Chinese travelers -- who, pre-pandemic, had been a major driver of international tourisms' Indian authorities implemented similar guidelines on travelers not only from China, but also several nearby locations including Japan, South Korea and Thailand. The guidelines are aimed at ensuring that Covid doesn't spread quickly as it has in China, authorities said Tuesday.

Taiwan also announced mandatory tests on arrival for travelers coming from mainland China on Wednesday. The self-ruling island has banned mainland Chinese tourists since the pandemic, and only allows Chinese citizens to visit for business or family reasons.

In all three places, those found positive on arrival will be required to quarantine for several days.

Meanwhile, the United States announced it will require a pre-departure negative test result for travelers from China, including Hong Kong and Macao -- as well as popular third-country gateways such as Seoul, Toronto and Vancouver.The measures are particularly striking given most of these places -- especially in the West -- have long reopened their borders and abandoned testing requirements as part of the transition to living with Covid. China responded on Wednesday by claiming its Covid situation was "under control," and accused Western media of "distorting" its recent policy changes.

In Europe, Italy -- the first country on the continent to be hit by a widespread outbreak in 2020 -- announced it would require Covid tests for all travelers coming from China, with the health minister saying it was essential to identify "any variants ... in order to protect the Italian population."

European Union health security officials will also meet on Thursday to discuss the China outbreak and any "possible measures," said the EU Commission on Twitter.

So are variants a risk?

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged the risk of a new variant emerging in "unvaccinated populations."

"Even though (in China) officially they have 90% of the population vaccinated with two doses of the inactivated vaccines, you still have a large percentage of the elderly who are not vaccinated ... and many of the people who are vaccinated did so more than six months ago, so their antibody levels already are very low," he said. "So we can't rule out the possibility that new variants can indeed emerge in China and spread to other parts of the world."

One federal US health official pointed to the speed of the outbreak in China, saying: "With so many people in China being infected in a short period of time, there is a chance and probability that a new variant will emerge."US officials have also expressed concerns about China's lack of transparency surrounding the recent surge in cases, particularly the absence of genome sequencing information that could help detect new strains of the coronavirus.

However, GISEAD, a global virus database, said Chinese authorities had been submitting more genomic information from recent samples -- and that these seem to match the variants that are already circulating globally.

Karen Grepin, an associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, said a country's best defense against potential variants was to focus on domestic policies protecting its own population -- such as stepping up vaccinations, maintaining social distancing and other basic public health measures.

"In a lot of parts of the world, the pandemic feels like it's over ... but at the end of the day, (these measures) are ultimately what prevents the transmission of the virus," she said.

"If countries are at the point where they think those things are no longer important, because for example they've developed so much population immunity, then why care about a couple of new cases coming in from China?"