China Says Citizens Can Travel. The World Isn’t Quite Ready.
ROME—For the first time in nearly three years, flights from mainland China are back in the air. But governments in a number of destination countries haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet.
In Italy, the first country in the EU to impose new restrictions on travel from China since early 2020, every passenger on all flights coming from China—both Chinese nationals and other foreign nations—must undergo an antigen test before they leave the airport.
More than half of the passengers on one flight into Milan that arrived on Dec. 26 tested positive for COVID, Italian officials said. Of those, the primary variant found in the samples sequenced was Omicron, according to Italy’s new prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who said the news was “comforting.” Those who test positive will be told to isolate, but will not be provided state-funded accommodation to do so.