U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is not testing travelers from China, CBP Port Director Jeffrey Hofschneider said.
“CBP is not conducting any form of testing of any person or passenger,” he added.
But “any person, regardless of citizenship, who is coming from China or [its special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong] must have a negative PCR test valid for 48 hours,” Hofschneider said.
“We have informed the airlines to verify if their passengers are in compliance,” he added.
“If they are not in compliance with the CDC requirements, passengers will be denied boarding. The airline carriers are not supposed to board them on the foreign end,” he said.
“Passengers must show a negative test prior to issuance of a boarding pass,” he added.
Hofschneider reiterated that CBP is not conducting any form of testing of any person or passenger.
“CDC guidelines were provided to carriers and stakeholders as an advisory,” he said.
Last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it would require a negative Covid-19 test or documentation of recovery for air passengers boarding flights to the U.S. originating from China, Hong Kong and Macau.
CDC announced the step during the surge in Covid-19 cases in China, “given the lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported from” the Asian nation.
