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Speaker 1: The United States, as Rich mentioned, is going to demand

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Speaker 1: a negative COVID test for travelers from China as of

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Speaker 1: January five, US joining the conversation as a Bloomberg White

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Speaker 1: House reporter Jordan Fabian, Jordan, thank you as always. Now,

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Speaker 1: the White House has been complaining about lack of transparency

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Speaker 1: for the last couple of weeks. Now, the Milan flight

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Speaker 1: seemed to be pretty empirical proof that China will export homecron.

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Speaker 1: Do you think this is what the impetus was for today, Yeah, certainly,

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Speaker 1: the level of infections that are being seen in China,

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Speaker 1: as well as what the White Houses calling the lack

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Speaker 1: of transparency, drove this decision today. In particular, they're worried

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Speaker 1: about lack of transparency surrounding genomic sequencing, but that that's

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Speaker 1: the complicated words for your detecting new variants. What their

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Speaker 1: public health officials are worried about is the level of

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Speaker 1: infection in China are so high that there could be

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Speaker 1: new variants circulating that that they don't know about, and

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Speaker 1: they don't want those variants to be transmitted by travelers

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Speaker 1: coming from China, which is what drove the decision today

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Speaker 1: to impose this testing requirement on travelers. Yeah, now, how

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Speaker 1: is this? How is the program going to work? And

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Speaker 1: we apparently have a number of details on it, although

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Speaker 1: it was not an official statement that came from health

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Speaker 1: officials at the White House. Is that right? Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: officials brief reporters earlier today about it. We absolutely background

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Speaker 1: on it. Basically, you know, starting on January five, Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's going to be a requirement that people coming directly

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Speaker 1: from China or who were in the country ten days

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Speaker 1: before their departures to the US will have to show

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Speaker 1: either negative PCR test or a negative Anderson tests or

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Speaker 1: one of the rapid tests uh to in order to

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Speaker 1: gain entry to the United States. And so that's going

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Speaker 1: to be the requirement at all airports moving forward. Okay,

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Speaker 1: And they it does include Hong Kong and Macau. Correct, yes, correct,

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Speaker 1: And and it's Hong Kong, Macau, And it's all passs

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Speaker 1: regardless of their nationality or vaccination status. So it's anyone

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Speaker 1: coming from China. It's not targeted at Chinese people. It's uh,

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Speaker 1: it's coming from China, given the concern over the circulation

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Speaker 1: of the virus there. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, Jordan,

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Speaker 1: because that was. That was one of the first things

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Speaker 1: that that crossed my mind. This does not seem to

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Speaker 1: be an ethnic if if somebody from the us UM

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Speaker 1: went to China, was there for for ten days and

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Speaker 1: they needed a negative task, correct, that's correct, That's correct.

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Speaker 1: And you know, officials have really gone to lengths, you know,

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Speaker 1: in the conversations that I've had with them, to explain

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Speaker 1: we're not we're not targeting China, you know, for you know,

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Speaker 1: any reasons regarding the U S. China relationship. This isn't

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Speaker 1: even about you know, the COVID zero policies coming down.

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Speaker 1: It's about the level of infections being seen there and

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Speaker 1: fears that it could be seeing a new variant. And

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Speaker 1: so that's really what officials are saying drove this decision. Okay,

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Speaker 1: now I know this was a background briefing, but but

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Speaker 1: was this the extent of what they said? Are they

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Speaker 1: planning anything else? There are some more minor steps that

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Speaker 1: you know, public health officials will be keen to look at,

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Speaker 1: including surveillance at certain airports. So again this is part

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Speaker 1: of their efforts to sniff out any new variants. They're

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Speaker 1: gonna be doing surveillance testing. It a couple of airports

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Speaker 1: on the West coast. But right now, you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: told there's not anything more strict under consideration, So we're

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Speaker 1: not hearing anything about you know, travel bands or quarantines

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Speaker 1: or anything more drastic at this point. This is about

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Speaker 1: as far as they're willing to go for now, given

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Speaker 1: the situation of China. Alright, Jordan has always thank you

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Speaker 1: so much, a White House reporter, Jordan Fabian