Coronavirus: Bans on travellers from the mainland a risky ‘overreaction’, China’s UN envoy in Geneva tells WHO
- ‘Isolation is not beneficial to international collaboration and may interfere with prevention and control efforts,’ Chen Xu says
- Echoes World Health Organisation Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
China’s United Nations envoy in Geneva on Tuesday warned that travel restrictions imposed on mainland visitors by other countries to contain the coronavirus outbreak could backfire, calling the move an example of the kind of “overreaction” the world needed to avoid amid the crisis.
Chen Xu’s remarks at a World Health Organisation (WHO) technical briefing on the virus echoed comments by WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the start of the session.
“We believe overreaction, by adopting restriction, isolation … is not beneficial to international collaboration, and such measures may lead to more complicated outcomes and interfere with prevention and control efforts,” Chen told delegates at the briefing.
The Chinese envoy raised the example of travel restrictions imposed by some countries during the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 flu, a move later found to have had limited impact in containing the virus’ spread.
Nearly two dozen countries have imposed restrictions of some form on travellers arriving from mainland China. Some nations have suspended visa-on-arrival privileges for all Chinese citizens while others have barred arrivals from the central Chinese province of Hubei, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.