China opens visa for foreigners vaccinated with Chinese jab

Foreigners who’ve taken a Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine will be allowed to enter China, said Beijing as it is set to ease border restrictions imposed last March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. This includes people from the US, India, and Pakistan.

Due to the closure of Chinese border last year in view of the pandemic, several foreigners with jobs in China were stranded overseas. But the country will now begin visa process for those vaccinated with a China-made jab, according to notices issued by Chinese embassies in several countries.

In the US, the Chinese embassy said in a statement on Monday that the applications of those “inoculated with Chinese COVID-19 vaccines,” visiting the Chinese mainland for work, business travel or humanitarian needs, would be processed from this week.

Similar statements were released by their embassies in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Italy, an the Philippines. The visa rules, they said, apply to those who had been either administered two doses of the vaccine or one single dose 14 days prior to their application for the visa.

However, despite having taken the Chinese jab, arrival on their shores still means going for a three-week quarantine.

Also, another issue with the announcement is that though the Chinese vaccines have been rolled out in several countries, they are not readily available in countries like India and Sri Lanka. This besides the fact that Chinese jabs are still struggling to gain international trust.

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China has recently approved a fourth domestically-produced vaccine for emergency use as part of its plan to inoculate its domestic population, but has not yet approved any foreign-made jabs. It has been slow in vaccinating its population of 1.4 billion people with its latest official figures indicating that it has administered 64.98 million doses of vaccines.

Besides, China has also sent vaccines overseas in an effort to undo the criticism it faced over the initial spread of the virus from ground zero Wuhan. They will soon be exporting around 400 million doses of their home-made vaccines, according to their state media.