Mike Pompeo: China wants to spread another COVID variant by opening travel

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists the U.S. – and the world – should shut down accepting travel from China right after the Communist country announced it would be easing travel restrictions in the New Year.

He warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping has a plot to infect the world and spread a new COVID-19 variant after ‘the whole world has been through hell.’

China, which has the most stringent COVID-19 restrictions still in place, announced last month that it would start allowing travel out of and into the country following three years of ‘zero COVID’ policies.

Several countries, including the U.S., immediately said Chinese travelers would be required to test negative for coronavirus before boarding flights.

‘It sounds like we might have as many as 1 million Chinese people infected. Fifty percent of their population traveling,’ Pompeo told Cats Roundtable host John Catsimatidis in a Sunday interview.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned China is trying to spread a new variant of COVID-19 by reopening travel out of the country

‘There is no reason we should allow the Chinese to do this again, to send Chinese-infected persons around the world, knowingly infecting people all across the globe,’ he added.

Pompeo served as Secretary of State under President Donald Trump from April 2018 until the end of his presidency on January 20, 2021. Speculation has swirled that he is ramping up to make a bid for the White House in 2024.

He told Cats Roundtable in his radio interview on New Year’s Day that Xi needs to be ‘held accountable’ for every worldwide death that resulted from COVID-19.

‘Xi got away with this once,’ Pomepoe said. ‘I regret he wasn’t held accountable. We should still do that for the 6 million people who died between the spring of 2020 and today.’

‘But he’s doing it again. Just as in the spring of 2020 [when] he sent people around the world he knew were infected, he’s doing the same darn thing again,’ the former State Department head lamented.

‘He’s going to infect millions more. We shouldn’t let that happen.’

World leaders from the U.S., Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom all announced over the last week new rules that will require any passenger from China to test negative for coronavirus before boarding a plane to travel to their respective countries.

Some countries feel that that pre-departure testing is necessary from China due to a lack of trust the international community has with Chinese infection data and protections from vaccines.

Pompeo warned that the world could soon see similar images to what emerged from Milan, Italy in 2020 when COVID-19 first emerged and started spreading throughout Europe and the world.

Some experts, however, have downplayed the threat that another variant could really cause throughout the world and the impact it could have.

A man who helped develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine said that ‘trying to ban a virus’ through travel restrictions have been ‘shown not to work very well.’

‘Keep calm, we’ve got this covered,’ said Professor Calum Semple, an expert in outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool.