The latest The United States will start imposing testing requirements for travelers arriving from China, health officials announced Wednesday. Passengers will be required to show a negative coronavirus test or documentation that they have recovered from an infection before they board flights headed to the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The requirement, scheduled to go into effect Jan. 5, applies to people ages 2 and older. Other countries, including Britain, Japan and India, have started or will start imposing testing requirements for travelers arriving from China. The United States also plans on increasing from five to seven the number of airports that offer voluntary genomic sequencing of passengers. "The move will allow public health officials to gain information about the genetic profile of the coronavirus from passengers traveling on 500 flights weekly from 30 countries," Washington Post reporters Frances Stead Sellers and Bryan Pietsch write. Chinese officials eased coronavirus restrictions in December, and the country has seen a surge in cases since the rollback. Despite that increase in illness, the government in Beijing insists it is in control of rising infections. According to a Post investigation, video footage shows many emergency departments are getting hit hard. The facilities are overflowing with patients, particularly in heavily populated regions. The magnitude of the outbreak is unclear, and the lack of transparency can be attributed to China's strict censorship and the fact that government officials have stopped reporting asymptomatic cases. "On Wednesday, Shanghai Neuromedical Center posted — then quickly deleted — a WeChat article estimating that 7 million residents were already infected and that half of the city's 25 million people would be infected by the end of this week," the reporters write. The country has seen a sharp contrast in messaging from the government in the past few weeks. It went from "zero covid" policies to lifting required testing and centralized quarantine protocols. Other important news Federal officials say they need more money to continue investigating waste, fraud and abuse of the more than $5 trillion in coronavirus aid that was distributed. "Criminals already had bilked billions of dollars from generous programs meant to help jobless Americans and small businesses in need, and Washington faced long, costly work to try to get it all back," Tony Romm and Yeganeh Torbati write. Vaccine hesitancy is contributing to a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles. The surge started in November and has infected more than 80 children in Columbus, Ohio — the country's largest measles outbreak this year. Experts fear these cases will become more commonplace as parents become increasingly resistant to childhood immunizations. | 
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