Two Flights to Milan from China Showed Almost Half of the Passengers were Positive for COVID-19
Per Bloomberg
Despite China's zero-COVID policies, two flights to Milan resulted in plenty of passengers testing positive for the virus. The authorities reported that over half of the passengers had the virus.
While the rest of the world has loosened its COVID restrictions, China's tightening of them, which resulted in factories shutting down, has affected major companies. Since the company is known as a great manufacturing hub, a lot of companies, from small to big, were affected by these shutdowns.
Even Apple, which has 90% of its production in China, per Fortune, has decided to look for manufacturing alternatives to China as the shutdowns have affected the supply of its newest iPhone 14 models. Despite China slightly relaxing its policies, Apple is still exploring other alternatives to its production.
Another country where Apple focuses its manufacturing in is India. The company already has its older iPhone models and even some iPhone 14s produced in India, per CNBC. Despite efforts, only less than 5% of the iPhone 14 production is done in India.
Health authorities in Italy will now start testing all arrivals that come from China. On top of testing passengers to see if they are positive, the officials also want to run tests to spot new variants.
The Health Ministry said that should a new strain be found, they will have the authority to impose stricter travel curbs from the country where the new strain came from.
The outbreaks in China reportedly started when the country lifted its strict zero-COVID policies. Due to the unpredictability of the scale of infection, countries like the US are considering adding stricter entry restrictions.
A majority of the positive passengers were asymptomatic. However, the local media says that concern is growing regarding new variants from passengers from China.
Sebastian Guelde, Health Ministry spokesman in Germany, said that authorities are watching the situation closely.
Guelde: “We have no indication that a more dangerous mutation has developed in China that would give rise to a declaration of a virus variant area, which would result in corresponding travel restrictions,”
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