South Korea said on Friday it will impose mandatory Covid-19 tests on travellers from China, joining the US, Japan and other countries in taking new border measures after Beijing’s decision to lift its stringent zero-Covid policies.

Separately, the latest data out of China shows no new Covid-19 variant has emerged, in spite of the large number of infections spreading throughout the country.

A Dec 28 statement from Gisaid, a global data science initiative, confirmed no new variants have yet emerged from the current outbreak in China.

In The Straits Times’ The Big Story, Multimedia Correspondent Harianto Diman speaks with Professor Dale Fisher, a senior infectious diseases consultant at NUH, to weigh in on these developments.